CHRISTIANITY 



RELIGION OF NATURE. 



LECTURES 

DELIVEBEB BEFOBE THE LOWELL INSTITUTE, 






A. P. PEABODY, D. D., LL.D., 

PREACHER TO THE UNIVERSITY, AND PLU2IMER PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN MORALS 
IN HARVARD COLLEGE. 



BOSTON: 
OOULD AND* LINCOLN, 

59 WASHINGTON STREET. 

NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. 

CINCINNATI: GEORGE S. BLANCHARD. 

1864. 



'C 



«8V 



>A 



V 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

GOULD AND LINCOLN, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



Exchange 
1 6 

JUN 16 i94 2 

Accessions Division 



University Press: 
Stereotyped by Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cam bridge. 



*) 






f ) 



PRE FACE, 



// 



The author by no means claims as original the con- 
ception of Christianity as coincident with the religion 
of nature ; but he is not aware that precisely this line 
of proof or defence has been adopted in any formal 
treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Yet he is 
profoundly convinced that it is on grounds of a priori 
probability that the controversy between those who ad- 
mit and those who deny a special, authoritative reve- 
lation through Jesus Christ is now to be waged. 

It is not a little singular that a priori objections took 
precedence of historical in the early days of the Church. 
We have no reason to suppose that Celsus denied the 
miraculous element in the Evangelical narratives. In 
times of ready faith as to the occult and marvellous in 
nature and the wonder-working power of demons, it was 
easy to admit the salient facts recorded in the Gospels, 
and yet to reject the truths which they seemed to authen- 
ticate. The two leading considerations urged by Celsus 
against the new religion were its promulgation among 
and for the poor, uneducated, and ignoble, and its claim 
to universality, both which features appeared to him so 
intrinsically absurd as to be incapable of proof. It is 



IV PREFACE. 

no mean evidence of the penetrating and transforming 
power of the religion thus assailed, that theso strongest 
points of attack are now impregnable stations of de- 
fence, — that the whole civilized world would demand 
as essentials of a divinely authenticated religion that 
it should embrace within its blessings and its promises 
all sorts and conditions of men, and that it should be 
adapted to universal acceptance. 

In the last century, Hume indeed maintained the 
antecedent impossibility of miracles in such a sense as 
to render them incapable of being authenticated; it 
being, as he argued, more probable that any conceiv- 
able amount of human testimony should be false, than 
that they should be true. But the greater part of the 
infidel writers of the century aimed their attacks at the 
alleged facts and the historical evidences of the Hebrew 
and Christian Scriptures. Accordingly, it was the prime 
object of the advocates of Christianity to accumulate 
proofs of the genuineness and authenticity of the sacred 
writings. This they did, some of them with more zeal 
and thoroughness than discrimination and critical dis- 
cernment. Non multwm, sed multa, might well have been 
the motto of not a few, and testimonies of unimpeach- 
able validity and explicitness were often weakened by 
their juxtaposition with those of doubtful authority or 
of imperfect relevancy. Lardner's great work lies es- 
pecially open to this objection, if we consider it as an 
argument for Christianity, while as a repertory of the 
materials for argument it cannot be too highly prized or 
too gratefully regarded. Paley's treatise on the Evi- 



PREFACE. V 

dences of Christianity, on the other hand, was admirably 
adapted to the exigencies of his time. It seems to us a 
complete refutation of historical scepticism. It is not 
obsolete, and never can become so. In our own day, 
with a narrower scope, Mr. Norton's great work on 
the Genuineness of the Gospels is unequalled as a com 
pact array of historical arguments. His motto is, Non 
multa, sed multum. He rejects all testimony against 
which a shadow of doubt or a charge of irrelevancy can 
be urged, nay, almost all individual testimony ; for the 
witnesses that he places on the stand are, with hardly 
an exception, communities or bodies of men, and official 
personages who must have virtually spoken in the name 
and expressed the belief of the several churches or the 
collective Christendom which they represented. The 
second and third volumes, comprising the history of the 
various Gnostic sects, evince conclusively that those 
heretics, who on theological grounds could not but have 
rejoiced to invalidate our canonical Gospels, could find 
no historical pretence for their rejection. Mr. Norton 
also, at several points, adduces the strongest circumstan- 
tial evidence for these Gospels, showing that certain 
universally admitted states of belief and ecclesiastical 
habitudes could not have existed, had not the genuine- 
ness of the Gospels been universally regarded as beyond 
dispute. In fine, writers of this historical school have 
proved conclusively that the authorship of the four Gos- 
pels, the 'Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. 
Paul, by the men whose names they bear, rests on much 
stronger evidence than can be adduced for the genuine- 



Vi PREFACE. 

ness of any other writings of equal antiquity ; and that 
the facts which they record or recognize have all, and 
more than all, the marks of authenticity which belong 
to the universally admitted facts of ancient history. 

It may indeed be said that the now dominant school 
of infidelity, naturalism, or pseudo-Christianity stands 
on the high ground of searching historical criticism. 
This we deny. Its historical conclusions are not rea- 
sons for, but corollaries from, its unbelief. It assumes 
the a priori impossibility of revelation, special inspira- 
tion, and miracle, and on that basis erects its theories 
of the genesis of the sacred books and of the (so-called) 
legends or myths which they record. Their reasoning 
is this: " Had the actual companions of Jesus Christ 
written the Gospels, their contents could not have been 
so utterly false as we know them to be ; therefore these 
books were of later date, of divided authorship, of 
gradual growth." Were the critical canons and pro- 
cesses of Strauss and the Tubingen divines applied to 
any other than our sacred books, the manifest result 
would be a reductio ad absurdum. Were these canons 
and processes admitted in any other field of historical 
or bibliographical research, no ancient book whatever 
could be received as genuine, no fact a few centuries 
old could be regarded as otherwise than fabulous or 
doubtful, and the whole realm of the past would be 
given over to Pyrrhonism. But the desperate expe- 
dients to which writers of this school are driven, may 
be regarded as furnishing a valuable contribution to the 
Christian evidences. Their problem is to account for 



PREFACE. Vll 

the existence, internal character, and general reception 
of the Gospels on the hypothesis that their contents are 
in the main false. They can solve this problem only by 
maintaining that these books came into being and grew 
into their present shape in ways in which no books were 
ever known to have their birth and growth ; and that 
— mere foundlings, the children of many parents, owned 
of none — they foisted themselves at once, as of apos- 
tolic authority, upon the faith and reverence of Chris- 
tian communities in every part of the civilized world. 
A problem which admits of no more rational solution 
than this is un solvable. 

Meanwhile the phasis of scepticism which now so 
extensively prevails renders it incumbent on Christians 
to demonstrate that the religion of the Gospel is in all 
its parts, in all its apparatus, in all its history, natural 
religion, — that it is not a provisional scheme, not a 
supplementary dispensation, but co-eternal with the 
mind of God, and coeval with the souls of men, — that 
its doctrines and precepts are not true and right be- 
cause they were revealed, but that they were revealed 
because they are essentially true and immutably right. 
It is only when this conviction is produced in the mind 
of the objector, that he is prepared to listen to argument 
and to weigh evidence as to the historical aspects of the 
question. 

The following Lectures grew out of an invitation 
received by the author, to prepare for the Lowell Insti- 
tute a course of Lectures on Natural Religion. He, re- 



Vlll PREFACE. 

garding Christianity as natural religion par excellence, 
asked and obtained permission to fill out a programme 
for the prescribed course arranged in accordance with 
this view. As a treatise this volume is incomplete, and 
less nearly complete than it might have seemed had a 
single province of the large field of inquiry been se- 
lected. But the author deemed it advisable, in a series 
of public Lectures, rather to illustrate the extended 
application of his mode of reasoning, than to attempt 
the thorough treatment of any one department of the 
subject to the neglect of all the rest. 

The author has in several instances incorporated in 
these Lectures passages of his own articles previously 
printed in the periodicals to which he has been a fre- 
quent contributor. He has not thought it expedient, or 
even right, to omit things that needed to be said, because 
he had said them elsewhere, or to present in a meaner 
guise thoughts which he had once arrayed in the best 
attire he could weave for them. 

The work is offered to the public, not without sincere 
diffidence as to its merits, but with an assurance which 
cannot be made stronger, that the citadel of our faith is 
for the present to be maintained and defended chiefly 
on such grounds as are here exhibited. 

Harvard University, October 15, 1863. 






CONTENTS. 



LECTUEE I. 

Natural and Revealed Religion. 

paob 
Christianity as old as the Creation . .13 

Religion defined 17 

Distinction between Natural and Revealed Religion 19 

Alleged Sources of Religious Knowledge, — Consciousness ... 19 

Intuition . . . .21 

Reasoning ... 23 

Analogy proves nothing 24 

Office of Analogy 26 

Amount of Religious Knowledge attainable independently of Revelation 28 

Imperfections of Natural Religion 29 



LECTURE II. 

Revelation. 

Revelation defined 32 

Natural Religion the Material for Revelation 33 

Revelation a Postulate of Human Nature 34 

Demanded by the Analogy of the Divine Government . . 36 

Rendered probable by the Nature of God 38 

Objections to Christianity grounded on its late Promulgation and limited 

Diffusion 42 

Fitness of the Christian Era for the Establishment of Christianity . . 45 
1* 



X CONTENTS. 

LECTURE III. 

Miracles. 

Revelation needs to be authenticated ... ... 51 

Belief in Miracles natural to Man ... . 56 

Miracles, a part of the Course of Nature ... ... 58 

Not necessarily Exceptions to Natural Laws .... 65 

Worth of a miraculously attested Revelation, in Temptation . . 67 

In Sorrow . . . 68 



LECTURE IV. 

Records op Revelation. 

Man's Need of Authoritative Scriptures 72 

Revelation must needs create its own Literature 75 

Marks of Authenticity in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures . . 76 

Human Element in the Scriptures 83 

Tokens of the Divine Element in their Authorship 88 



LECTURE V. 

The Love of God. 

Man may verify what he could not discover 93 

Beneficent Ends in Nature ......... 95 

The Natural Theology of Pain 98 

Moral Evil . . . . . , 102 

The Paternal Providence of God 104 

The Case of the Unprivileged 109 



LECTURE VI. 

The Providence of God in Human Art. 

Art is but the Use or Imitation of Nature 116 

Adaptation of Man's Physical Constitution to the Purposes of Art . 123 
All Art Mathematical 130 






CONTENTS. XI 

LECTURE VII. 

The Providence of God in Human Society. 

The Solidarity of the Human Family a Christian Idea .... 134 

Mutual Relations of the Races . . ' . . . . . . 135 

Distribution of Natural Endowments 139 

The Laboring Classes not cut off from the Means of Improvement . 145 

Man overworked 147 

What Machinery will do for the Laborer 151 

LECTURE VIII. 

The Holiness of God. — God in Christ. 

God's Holiness manifested in the Human Conscience .... 156 

In his Retributive Providence . . . 162 

Accordance with Nature of Christ's Mediatorial Office .... 164 

Of his Manifestation of the Divine Attributes 165 

Of his Moral Perfectness .... 168 

Of his outward Condition and Experiences . 171 

LECTURE IX. 

Immortality. 

The Soul Immaterial, and therefore Immortal 176 

Perception the Function of the Soul . . 180 

Immortality inferred from the Changes that take place in Life . .183 

From the Phenomena of Death .... 184 

Arguments for Immortality from Man's Intellectual and Moral Nature . 186 

From the Growth of Character in Old Age . 189 
From the Waste of Life ... . . .191 

From the Instinct of Self-Advan cement . 193 

■ LECTURE X. 

Christian Morality. 

Christian Morality universal and eternal 196 

The Mutual Dependence of Piety and Charity original in the Gospel . 199 



Xll CONTENTS. 

The Pietistic Element divorced from the Philanthropic .... 201 

Philanthropy without Piety . . . 204 

The two united in Christ and in Christianity 206 

The Reconciliation of Self-Love and Brotherly Love peculiar to the 

Gospel 209 



LECTURE XI. 

The Natural, Religion of the State. 

The Family the Germ of the State 216 

The Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue a Political Precept . . 217" 

Relation of Domestic Life to State Life 221 

' Civilization, its Means and its Hinderances 227 

Christianity essential to Progressive Civilization 232 

Contrast between Ancient and Modern Civilization .... 235 



LECTURE XII. 

The Sabbath a Law of Natural Religion. — Conclusion. 

Christian Institutions 237 

The Sabbath primeval 239 

A law of the Human Body and of the Material Universe . 242 

Essential to Intellectual Growth and Vigor . . . 244 

A Civilizing Agent . 246 

Conduces to Man's Political Well-being .... 248 

Indispensable to the Religious Nature .... 251 

Recapitulation of the Course 254 

Comparative Worth of the Internal and External Evidences of Chris- 
tianity 255 

Conclusion 256 






CHRISTIANITY 

THE RELIGION OF NATURE, 



LECTURE I. 

NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 

There stands an ancient architectural pile, with to- 
kens of its venerable age covering it from its corner-stone 
to its topmost turret ; and some imagine these to be 
tokens of decay, while to others they only indicate, by 
the years they chronicle, a massiveness that can yet defy 
more centuries than it has weathered years. Its founda- 
tion is buried in the accumulated mould and clustered 
mosses of many generations. Its walls are mantled and 
hidden by parasitic vines. Its apartments are some of 
them dank and cold, as if their very cement were dis- 
solving in chilly vapors. Others, built against the walls, 
were never framed into them ; and now their ceilings 
are broken, their floors are uneven as the surface of a 
billow, their timbers seem less to sustain one another 
than to break one another's fall. All through the house 
you see dilapidated furniture, — ornaments so called, 
which lost their last touch of gilding and trace of beauty 
ages ago, — articles once of use, which it seems absurd 
to call utensils now, so entirely has their need gone by 
and their purpose become effete. There are dwellers in 



14 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

the mansion whose whole demeanor makes you tremble 
lest the structure fall on your head or collapse beneath 
your feet. They will not have a cobweb disturbed, lest 
the ceiling should crumble at the touch of the broom. 
They are afraid to move the furniture, lest there be 
found some ugly gap in the wall behind. - And as for 
righting any of the displaced beams, or substituting new 
timbers where the old are thoroughly worm-eaten, they 
would as soon consent to have the whole building un- 
dermined or blown up. They assure you that it is still 
safe and strong, wind-proof and storm-proof, and that 
they want no other dwelling till its builder and owner 
shall prepare for them a new mansion under a brighter 
sky and in a more genial climate. But the very tones in 
which they give you this assurance are so hesitating, and 
they move about with so soft and cat-like a tread, and 
look so much alarmed at the least gust of wind, you can 
hardly persuade yourself that they believe what they 
say. 

You determine, therefore, to make your own investiga- 
tions. You dig away the mould, and lo ! the foundation 
was laid by no mortal hand ; it is primitive rock that 
strikes its roots down an unfathomable depth into the 
solid earth, so that no frosts can heave it, no convulsions, 
shake it. You tear the ivy from the walls, and you find 
them built of Cyclopean stones tongued and grooved into 
each other, betraying a power and skill that have no 
counterpart in the masonry of these modern times, and 
not a stone can need readjusting while the world shall 
stand. In every buttress and cross-wall, in the jointed 
slabs that constitute the roof and the Atlantean pillars 
that sustain it, you discern, with the unspent strength of 
ages past, hoarded strength for unnumbered ages to come. 






NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 15 

As to the feeble, tottering, effete portions of the edifice 
and its contents, you ascertain that all which bears the 
marks of decay is of comparatively recent date, — floors 
and partitions extemporized to suit the whims of individ- 
ual occupants, mere personal furniture, movables that do 
not belong there, — so that what seems old is new, while 
what is really old gives presage of perpetual youth. 

Such an edifice is Christianity. The sceptic denies, 
the timid disciple doubts, its stability. The cry, " The 
Church is in danger," is almost as old as the Church ; 
and there has never been a time when there has not 
been in some quarters a tendency to repress inquiry, to 
discourage thorough discussion, to distrust learning and 
science as forces that might shake the foundation of 
man's eternal hope. Even to the most friendly eye 
there is much about Christianity — not of it — of which 
we cannot say that it will last always, or wish that it 
may last long. It has extra-Scriptural technicalities of 
phrase and dogma which the world is happily outgrowing. 
Some of its rituals and organizations are fast losing their 
hold on the popular reverence. Its records are passing 
through the fierce ordeal of a scientific criticism, which 
may dislodge various old traditions as to their interpreta- 
tion and office. Its partition-walls are in so crumbling 
a condition that they can hardly be propped up much 
longer, and through many of them bold breaches are 
already made, and strong hands are shaking and loosen- 
ing the weak mortar and frail rafters of which they are 
built. 

Yet Christianity none the less presents the aspect of 
impregnable strength, its foundation the Rock of Ages, 
its walls upheaved, its top-stone laid, by the hand that 
built the heavens, and spread the floor of the ocean, and 



16 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

reared the everlasting hills. Tindall's deistical work, 
" Christianity as old as the Creation, or the Gospel a 
Republication of the Law of Nature," admits in its title 
the strongest ground, nay, the only ground, on which 
we can believe or defend Christianity. To suppose it a 
Divine afterthought, a supplementary creation, an ex- 
crescence upon nature, is to dishonor it under shelter 
of pretended advocacy, — nay, more, it is to impugn the 
Divine immutableness, — the integrity of those attributes 
which underlie all religion. The highest view of Chris- 
tianity is that which regards it as the religion of nature, 
as the constitutional law of the spiritual universe, as cor- 
responding to the mathematical laws which are embodied 
in the material universe, — absolute, necessary, eternal 
truth, — that which always was and ever will be. Rev- 
elation did not create it, any more than Newton created 
the la v of universal gravitation, or Kepler the laws of 
planetary motion. What Newton and Kepler were to the 
material universe, inspired men and the God-born Saviour 
were to the spiritual universe. Christianity was before 
the Word became flesh, before Moses, before Abraham ; 
it will equally be when in the open vision of heaven 
the written Word shall be no longer needed. 

This is the view which I propose to illustrate in the 
present course of Lectures. Natural Religion is the sub- 
ject assigned to me. My purpose is to demonstrate the 
identity of Christianity with natural religion. 

The residue of this Lecture will be occupied with the 
definition of the term religion, with the distinction ordi- 
narily made between natural and revealed religion, and 
with the sources and contents of natural religion as dis- 
tinguished from revealed. 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 17 

As to the meaning of religion, its derivation gives us 
but doubtful and imperfect guidance. I should prefer, in 
common with almost all grammarians and lexicographers, 
ancient and modern, to derive it from religare, to rebind, 
that is, to bind anew, and with new tenacity, the human 
spirit to its Author and Father. But Cicero, who under- 
stood his language better than we do, and whose author- 
ity on such a point one hardly dares to disavow, says that 
religio comes from relegere, to reperuse, that is, to ponder 
seriously and intently, and that those who gave their 
earnest heed to things relating to the gods were called 
religious [religiosi], ex relegendo. 1 According to the first 
of these derivations, religion is the science of our rela- ■ 
tions and obligations ; according to the second, it is the 
science of the things which lie beneath the surface and 
are taken note of only by the heedful, that is, of things 
unseen and spiritual ; — two definitions which, widely as 
they differ in their terms, coincide as to their contents. 
We might comprehend the two in one, and define re- 
ligion to be the science of our unseen, or rather our 
supersensual relations. When we discriminate between 
the religion of the intellect and that of the heart, we 
denote by the former a belief in those relations, by the 
latter a state of character in accordance with that belief. 
There are two or three comments to be made on this 
definition before proceeding farther. 

1. There is a religion. There are supersensual truths 
and facts. Even to deny the being of God or the exist- 
ence of the human soul, is not to eliminate religion from 
the circle of the sciences. Being has its cause, its laws ; 
there are reasons for the existence of things as they are ; 
and this cause, these laws, these reasons, are religion. 

1 De Natura Deorum, II. 28. 



18 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

The theory which substitutes for the sublime genealogy 
of Holy Writ, with its anthem-like close, " which was the 
son of Adam, which was the son of God," the descent, 
or rather the ascent, of man from the animalcule, the 
tadpole, the prone quadruped, the ape, if true, is relig- 
ion, — it defines our unseen relations. 

2. There is but one religion. It is, in the nature of 
things, impossible that there should be more than one. 
If any specific proposition or set of propositions with ref- 
erence to our unseen relations be true, any other propo- 
sition or set of propositions covering the same ground 
must be false. If Christianity be true, it is not a religion, 
as it is sometimes called, but religion. If Judaism also be 
true, it is so, not as distinct from, but as coincident with, 
Christianity, — the one religion, to which it can bear 
only the relation borne by the part to the whole. If 
there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they 
are not portions of other religions, but portions of the 
one religion, which somehow became incorporated with 
fables and falsities. 

3. This one religion, whatever it be, is cognizable by 
the human mind. I do not mean that all supersensual 
truth is thus cognizable. There are undoubtedly aspects 
in which the Divine character is beyond our conception. 
Nay, the mode of our own being and the laws of finite 
existence in general are attainable by us only in part. 
But our relations we are capable of knowing. What 
God is to us, and what we are to him, we are competent 
to understand. Our relations to one another, our obliga- 
tions, our accountability, our destiny, — whether it be an- 
nihilation or continued existence after death, — are also 
subjects of our possible knowledge. Let it not be said 
that the themes of religious speculation are infinite, and 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 19 

therefore incomprehensible. We admit that the Infinite 
as such cannot be comprehended by a finite mind ; but 
the finite acts and manifestations of the Infinite, so far 
from being incomprehensible, constitute in the last anal- 
ysis all our knowledge. 

We come now to the distinction between natural and 
revealed religion. These terms designate, not different 
classes of truths, but the different methods in which 
religious truth becomes known to mankind. What is 
ascertained by the unaided exercise of man's own powers 
is called natural religion ; what is received on testimony 
is called revealed religion. But the latter is no less 
natural than the former. The fatherhood of God, the 
forgiveness of sins, mediation, atonement, retribution, if 
truths, are truths of Divine and human nature, essential, 
everlasting truths, no less so because unknown, formerly 
to all, and still to the greater part of mankind, than if 
man were born to the knowledge of them. The Bible, 
indeed, recognizes the validity of this statement. Its 
Gospel is " the everlasting Gospel." Its promises are 
" the eternal purpose of God." Its redemption sacrifice 
is " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." 

Our first inquiry in the department of natural religion 
is as to the sufficiency of man's unaided powers to arrive 
at a knowledge of religious truth. If this knowledge be 
attained, it must be attained either by consciousness, by 
intuition, or by reasoning. Let us consider successively 
these alleged sources of religious knowledge. 

I. Consciousness. We are conscious only of our- 
selves, — of our own conditions of thought and feeling. 
Consciousness gives us no knowledge of anything outside 
of ourselves, — no objective knowledge. I am not con- 



20 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

scious of these lights, these faces, but only of certain 
impressions on my visual organs, which I know, on 
grounds independent of my consciousness, must proceed 
from gas-lights and human countenances. I am not 
conscious of the existence of my friend. I am conscious 
merely of my affection for him, and of my own assurance 
that the affection is reciprocated. His existence and his 
regard for me I have learned through other spurces. I 
am not conscious of the being and attributes of God. 
I cannot be conscious of his providence or of his love to 
me. My own consciousness can teach me nothing con- 
cerning his consciousness. I am conscious of the capacity 
of reverence, but not of its object, — of the conception 
of infinity, but not of the Infinite Being. When I learn 
from sources independent of my consciousness that God 
is, and that he does good continually, I am conscious of 
love and gratitude to him. 

Again, consciousness is of the present moment, not of 
the past or the future. I am not conscious of what I said 
and did yesterday. I am conscious of certain remem- 
brances ; but those remembrances, though of the past, 
constitute my present state of mind, — the past, when it 
loses its hold on my memory, drops out of my conscious- 
ness. Equally little can I be conscious of the future. I 
may be conscious of hopes more or less well-grounded ; 
but I am full as vividly conscious, often, of fallacious 
hopes, as of hopes that are to be realized. I am not 
conscious of immortality. I may be conscious of adapta- 
tion, desire, longing for continued existence ; but this 
consciousness is no more the evidence of its own realiza- 
tion, than my consciousness of adaptation, desire, longing 
for some office or emolument that in no wise depends on 
myself, is evidence of its own realization. I am, indeed, 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 21 

conscious of tastes, loves, joys, aspirations, which are 
independent of my material organization, and which may 
outlast it, — I therefore am not conscious that I shall 
wholly die when the body dies. But equally little am I 
conscious that I shall necessarily survive the body. On 
the other hand, my being is not necessary. I began to 
be. A few years ago I was not. It is no more neces- 
sary that I should be a century hence, than that I should 
have been a century ago. 

Consciousness, then, is not an adequate source of relig- 
ious knowledge. 

II. How is it with intuition ? Intuition is spontane- 
ous belief, — the perception of the intellect. There are 
truths which we discern without reasoning, and which 
cannot be demonstrated by reasoning. Thus we know, 
but cannot prove, that a part is less than the whole ; 
that a straight line is the shortest distance between two 
points ; that, if equal quantities be taken from equal quan- 
tities, the remainders will be equal. In like manner we 
know, but cannot prove, that an effect implies a cause ; 
that what is true of a species is true of the individu- 
als that compose it; that the universal experience and 
testimony of mankind are a valid ground of belief. 
Truths of this class are necessarily developed with the 
development of the mind ; they are a part of the men- 
tal organism ; they are wanting only in the infant, the 
idiot, and the undeveloped savage. No sane mind that 
has attained to self-reflection denies or doubts them. 
Now even the most simple religious truths are obviously 
not of this class. There have been well-developed and 
highly-cultivated minds that have believed in no god and 
in many gods, that have rejected personal immortality, 
that have acquiesced in the most grovelling materialism. 



22 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

Nay, among the philosophical thinkers and writers who 
profess to regard intuition as the prime source of our 
supersensual knowledge, a very large proportion at the 
present moment are pantheists, and maintain that the 
human soul at death lapses from self-consciousness, and 
is reabsorbed into the impersonal soul of the universe. 
On the other hand, those who think that they have an 
intuitive perception of God and of immortality are, with 
rare exceptions, persons who were nurtured under Chris- 
tian auspices, whose earliest utterances were shaped in 
prayer, about whose infancy there hung a sacred atmos- 
phere, and who drew in these sublime verities with the 
first rudiments of knowledge. 

I confess that, were I to consult my own present con- 
sciousness, I might term the primal truths of religion 
intuitive ; for I am sure that with me they depend not 
on reasoning or testimony, nor could any possible weight 
of argument disprove them. But then those truths are 
inseparable in my thought from a Christian mother's 
teachings, and from the dying benediction which is all 
that I remember of a sainted father ; and there are other 
collateral beliefs which I know to be questionable, yet 
which I can never question, — which are to me equally 
like intuitions, because they came to me through the 
same hallowed medium. And when I reflect on the 
countless multitude of keen, clear-sighted men who have 
lived and died in ignorance of the one God and the life 
eternal, and on the less numerous, yet by no means 
feeble, host of vigorous minds that have seen and spurned 
the full light of evangelic teaching on these same truths, 
have denied their God, and have embraced annihilation 
as their certain destiny, I cannot regard the truths of 
religion as necessary or intuitive beliefs. 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 23 

III. There remains to be considered reasoning as a 
source of religious knowledge. The proper province of 
reasoning is to perform for our knowledge or belief pre- 
cisely the office which chemistry performs for material 
substances, that of analysis or decomposition. It ascer- 
tains the contents, the component parts, of what we 
previously knew or believed. A conclusion, in order to 
be valid, must be contained in its premises. But as to 
religious truth, our premises are but few and scanty; 
for what underived data for our reasoning as to themes 
which exceed the universe and embrace twin eternities 
can lie within the observation and experience of us, the 
children of yesterday and the dust ? 

Is it contended, however, that induction may transcend 
the bounds of observation and experience, — may infer 
general laws from the repetition of phenomena, universal 
truths from the aggregation of particular facts ? I an- 
swer, that induction has a religious basis, presupposes a 
fundamental truth of religion, and therefore cannot be 
employed to establish that on which alone it depends. 
Induction is syllogism with the immutable attributes of 
God for a constant term. It is a mode of reasoning 
which, though so obviously valid to our conceptions, 
never entered into the logic of Pagan antiquity. It is 
entirely the growth of Christian culture, — of minds 
bathed in the Christian doctrine of a universal and per- 
fect, harmonious and self-consistent Providence. 

Very nearly the same statement applies to the ar- 
gument from analogy. This too rests on the immuta- 
bleness of the Divine attributes. On no other ground 
can we infer, where observation and experience do not 
reach, the extension of the laws and the embodiment 
of the principles which we trace and verify within 



24 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

the range open to our inspection. Analogy, therefore, 
like induction, presupposes the foundation-truths of re- 
ligion, and cannot be employed to establish them. In- 
deed, induction and analogy coincide entirely with syllo- 
gism in this, — that the conclusion is contained in the 
premises. When we infer a general law, or an analogous 
fact, truth, or system, we simply announce what is in- 
cluded in the Divine immutableness which constitutes 
the major premiss, and the observed or known fact, or 
bundle of facts, which constitutes the minor premiss. 

Moreover, analogy, thus defined, proves nothing. At 
the most, it establishes a strong probability, but never 
without some opening for doubt. Analogy is resem- 
blance between objects of different classes, or between 
different departments of knowledge. When up to a cer- 
tain point we trace a resemblance between two classes 
or departments, we infer that the resemblance extends to 
other points in which we cannot trace it. But it is 
always possible that at any one of these points resem- 
blance ceases and difference begins. 

Let us take for an instance the immortality of the 
soul. Among the many arguments for immortality de- 
rived from analogy, the following seems to me to be the 
strongest. To every order of organized and sentient 
beings, except man, there is open a sphere of devel- 
opment and action commensurate with its capacities. 
Analogy leads us to believe that man too has such a 
sphere. But he has it not in this world. Here there is 
go utter a disparity as to be ludicrous, were it not un- 
speakably sad, between his vast capacities and desires on 
the one hand, and his narrow stage and brief span of 
being on the other. There must then, we ijifer, be a life 
after death, which shall afford to man the scope for 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 25 

development which other animals find here. E very- 
other terrestrial existence we can comprehend and round 
off in a cycle, all whose points lie within the sphere of 
our vision. Man is not complete within such a cycle 
His being, therefore, if in analogy with that of his fellow- 
creatures, must reach on beyond death, and if beyond 
death, why not forever ? To regard death as the extinc- 
tion of his being makes his existence a solitary phenome- 
non, to which nothing in the entire universe corresponds. 
This reasoning has indeed a high probability in its favor, 
yet it falls far short of certainty ; for man differs from all 
other sentient beings so widely, and in so many particu- 
lars, as to render it at least possible that this very incom- 
pleteness of his existence may be one of the points of 
difference. 

Again, analogy often points equally to two opposite 
conclusions. Thus, on this very subject of immortality, 
how many hopeful analogies can we cite, — in the cat- 
erpillar whose death is but a new and higher birth, — 
in the grain of wheat reappearing in the sheaf, — in 
the annual resurrection-fiat that restores the winter's 
desolation, and renders back to tree and shrub a life 
which had seemed extinct, yet never was more vigorous, 
than when it gave no sign ! When in our happy and 
hopeful hours we throw out our unbuttressed arch of 
dreamy speculation toward heaven, these seem more 
than mere poetic fancies ; they become symbols, proph- 
ecies, pledges of the life eternal. But when the shadow 
of death falls heavily around us ; when those go from us 
who carry with them a solid portion of our own being ; 
when we count the rapidly stealing years, and feel that 
our noon has passed, and we are gliding down the 
western slope of our brief day ; when the fingers of 
2 



26 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

disease are fumbling at our heart-strings, — then a 
troop of sad analogies force themselves upon us. We 
think of the blighted buds and germs, immeasurably 
more numerous than the fructifying, of the destruction 
with no resurrection in many departments of organized 
being, of the loss of identity in so many cases where 
there is a continuity of life ; and these resemblances are 
melancholy presages of victorious death and a devouring 
grave. In fine, there is no form of belief, no hope, no 
fear, which may not fortify itself by analogies. Analogy, 
therefore, proves nothing, and cannot be a trustworthy 
source of religious knowledge. 

What, then, is the office of analogy ? It serves, in the 
first place, to guide us in the investigation of truth, and, 
secondly, to answer objections. 

1. To guide us in the investigation of truth. The 
mere wish to discern truth is fruitless. Nature has but 
two answers — yes and no — for her inquirer ; and 
whether he ever gets a yes, depends entirely on his skill 
in shaping his questions. What shall we ask ? How 
shall we direct our inquiries in an unexplored field ? 
Analogy must frame our questions, must suggest what 
we may reasonably expect to find. The likeness of 
things known and familiar may occur in things new and 
unexplored, and it is for this likeness that we are to 
look and ask, seeking, in what is as yet unknown, facts, 
principles, and laws analogous to those with which we 
are already conversant. Analogy thus carries the torch 
before us through the dim aisles of the temple of truth. 

2. The second office of analogy is to remove objections 
which we cannot answer, against facts or truths in whose 
behalf we have a competent weight of positive evidence. 
Of course, to answer objections is the readiest way of 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 27 

removing them. But often, from their very nature, or 
from the fimteness of our knowledge, they do not admit 
of being answered. In this case they are adequately 
met, if we can show that similar and equal objections lie 
against facts or truths which all men regard as absolutely 
certain. Thus against the evangelic history infidels urge 
some objections which we must admit to be unanswera- 
ble ; but if we can show that precisely the same objec- 
tions lie against portions of history which no sane man 
denies or doubts, analogy proves these objections utterly 
futile and nugatory, even though they be unanswerable. 
For instance, in the book entitled " Historic Doubts rel- 
ative to Napoleon Bonaparte," Archbishop Whately, 
with consummate skill and yet with transparent fairness 
and honesty, applies to the several Memoirs of Napoleon 
and Histories of his times precisely the principles on 
which Hume and infidels of his school had impugned the 
authenticity of the Gospels ; and on those principles he 
proves that there is not a leading fact of Napoleon's life 
which does not admit of the gravest doubt, and yet more, 
that in all probability no such man as Napoleon ever 
existed. Now, as this line of argument could shake no 
man's belief in Napoleon's existence and history, rea- 
soning from analogy, we conclude that the same line of 
argument has no validity against the Gospels. 

We have a masterly specimen of this use of the argu- 
ment from analogy in the fifteenth chapter of St. Paul's 
First Epistle to the Corinthians. He, first, from the 
resurrection of Christ proves that of all men, shows that 
Jesus rose expressly as the type and pledge of universal 
immortality, and rests the whole positive stress of his 
reasoning on this glorious fact, attested by a cloud of wit- 
nesses, most of whom were living when he wrote. But 



28 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

then comes the sceptical inquiry, " How can these things 
be ? How are the dead raised, and with what bodies ? " 
In reply, he exhibits in the outward universe instances 
of the resurrection of virtually the same body in a differ- 
ent form, as in the case of the kernel of wheat, which, 
without losing its identity, reappears in a guise unlike that 
in which it was thrown into the ground. By this analogy 
he shows that there is in the annual course of nature a 
similar fact, known and read of all men, multiplied myri- 
ads of times, in itself equally strange with the resurrection 
of the dead, and encompassed by the same difficulties. 

Such are the alleged sources of natural religion, — 
consciousness, which cannot transcend self ; intuition, 
which, strictly speaking, does not extend to religious 
truth ; reasoning, which analyzes the previous items of 
our knowledge without adding to them. 

How much may be derived from these doubtful and 
precarious sources ? As regards the Divine Being, man 
could hardly fail to reach a belief in intelligence and 
power higher than his own. Nature bears unnumbered 
marks of design, and design implies a designer ; while 
the immense forces whose equilibrium or conflict works 
out each successive form and stage of design in nature 
lead irresistibly to the attributing of vast power, con- 
joined with skill and wisdom, to the designing mind or 
minds. But here the argument from design ceases. It 
does not prove an infinite creator ; for the universe is 
finite, and may have had a finite author. It does not 
prove the moral attributes of the Creator ; for the agen- 
cies of nature lend their force to mischief and evil, — 
they are charged to execute the malicious purposes of the 
wicked, — they are fraught with ministries of woe to the 
wretched. 






NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 29 

Yet more, the argument from design does not establish 
the unity or the personality of God. The harmony of na- 
ture is not readily perceived. Objects appear in isolated 
groups ; events in isolated cycles. There is war among 
the elements. The sun ripens, the swollen river devas- 
tates, the harvest-field. The rain fills, the hot breath of 
summer dries, the fountain and the lake. Nature seems 
a vast battle-ground between opposing designs and antag- 
onistic forces. Hence the human mind, constrained to 
believe in the existence of superhuman wisdom and 
power, resorts to polytheism, and cantons out the crea- 
tion into separate provinces, each with its tutelar divinity. 

Polytheism is the earliest stage of natural theology. 
With the progress of knowledge philosophy has birth. 
Contemplative minds awake to a sense of pervading 
system and order in the material universe. At this point 
speculation takes one of two directions. It either, still 
impressed with the perpetual conflict of good and evil, 
happiness and misery, in the world, resorts to the Oriental 
dualism, and conceives of a supremely good and a su- 
premely evil principle, who share the sovereignty of the 
universe ; or else, as in the Greek philosophy, it blends 
inseparably the shaping and benignant spirit with the 
brute and resisting matter through which it struggles for 
an ever more complete and full manifestation of itself, and 
thus frames an essentially pantheistic theology. There 
is reason to doubt whether natural religion, where the 
light of revelation has not preceded it, has ever tran- 
scended these forms of belief ; and it is a significant fact, 
that in the present age the philosophy which ignores 
revelation constantly tends to return to pantheism, so 
that in the speculations of many of the profoundest 
thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the 
idea of a personal God, the object of reverence, worship, 



30 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

and prayer, is wholly eliminated, — nature is God, man 
is God become self-conscious, everything is God, and 
God is everything or — nothing. 

As regards a future life, by virtue of intense longings, 
lame analogies, and inconclusive reasonings, natural re- 
ligion attains to the conjecture, the strong hope of a con- 
tinued existence ; but in no instance has it reached a 
confidence sufficient for consolation in the severest stress 
of need, or adequate to furnish rules and motives for 
the conduct of life. Indeed, Cicero, in his attempt to 
prove immortality, is careful to show that, if his reason- 
ing is faulty, annihilation is no great evil ; x and when 
his daughter dies, he confesses that he has lost all faith in 
his own arguments. 2 Nay, the strongest argument for 
immortality that has come down to us from the ancient 
world is based on the assumption of the past eternity of 
the imman soul, and may be compressed into the simple 
formula, — " That which had no beginning can have no 
end." 3 

As to the duties growing out of man's relations to God 
and his fellow-beings, they are derived in part from the 
essential conditions of life and of society, so that they 
could not remain wholly unknown ; while, on the other 
hand, the comprehension of their entire extent and their 
mutual interdependence can result only from those clear 
and adequate conceptions of religious truth which cannot 
be reached by man's unaided powers. Accordingly, while 
the ancients promulgated many sound moral precepts, 
there is hardly one of them who has not impressed his 
sanction on some atrocious immorality. Even the divine 
Plato recommends the murder of feeble and sickly in- 
fants, expressly allows drunkenness at the feasts of Bac- 

i Tusc. Quaest. I. 5 - 8. 2 Ep. ad Atticum, XII. 14. 

8 Plato's Phaedo, 47-58. 



NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 31 

chus, and authorizes some of the worst forms of licen- 
tiousness. 

I admit that modern deists have in numerous instances 
maintained a pure and lofty personal monotheism, have 
expressed firm faith in immortality, and have inculcated 
and practised the severest morality. But I cannot forget 
that they were educated as Christians, and their subse- 
quent unbelief could not shut out the light that came to 
them from the Sun of righteousness. To determine the 
utmost amount of religious truth that man can attain in- 
dependently of revelation, we must interrogate minds 
that can have derived nothing from revelation. And we 
certainly cannot err in assuming that classic antiquity had 
reached the climax of extra-Christian culture. In all but 
their religious aspects the Greek and the Roman mind 
transcended the powers of the modern intellect, and have 
left us, in poetry, in history, in philosophy, and in some of 
the fine arts, models which we can emulate, but cannot 
equal, giving color, indeed, to the belief that the early 
ages possessed in mental force and acumen and in cre- 
ative genius the same pre-eminence over modern times 
which we cannot but recognize in the physical proportions 
and strength of the ancients. But even Plato falls short 
of the clear conception of one personal Deity, and there 
hangs ever about his theology a pantheistic haze. Even 
Seneca, with an almost perfect system of ethics, fails to 
enter into the mystery of sorrow, cowers under the 
inevitable burdens and sufferings of humanity, and rec- 
ommends that recourse to suicide which he illustrated by 
his own example. Even the dying Socrates, though he 
trusts that he is going to the society of good men, warns 
his friends not to be too confident in a matter attended 
by so much uncertainty. 



LECTURE II. 

EEVELATION. 

In my last Lecture, I considered the sources of religious 
knowledge which are open to man through the unaided 
exercise of his own powers. I propose this evening to 
illustrate the place and office of Revelation with refer- 
ence to Natural Religion. 

Revelation denotes unveiling, — uncovering. It implies 
the previous existence of that which is uncovered, or 
made known. It excludes the idea of newness, of in- 
vention, of recent creation. Watt invented the steam- 
engine, and Arkwright the spinning-jenny, which had no 
previous existence ; — Galileo revealed the satellites of 
Jupiter, which are as old as the planet in its present 
form, and, according to the nebular hypothesis, older ; 
Harvey revealed the circulation of the blood, which had 
been an unrevealed fact through all the antecedent ages 
of human history. Joseph Smith, his associates and 
successors, created what is peculiar to Mormonism ; Ma- 
homet created those portions of Mahometanism that he 
did not borrow, which are not truth, because they are the 
product of his own mind : we Christians believe that 
Jesus Christ revealed what is peculiar to Christianity, 
which is truth, because it was not the offspring of his 
own mind or age, but the disclosure of what was in the 
beginning in the mind of God, and in the nature, duty, 
and destiny of man. 



REVELATION. 33 

We thus see that it is only natural religion which can 
furnish the material for revelation. The distinction 
between natural and revealed religion is not essential, 
but modal, — referring not to the substance, but to the 
means of our knowledge. The clown on the hill-top 
and the astronomer in his observatory see the same 
heavens ; but where the former beholds only glittering 
points, the latter can trace the diversified disc of every 
planet, and can measure spaces and motions as if he trod 
the celestial paths with his chain and compass. In like 
manner, we can with the naked eye of reason and self- 
spun philosophy discern and know little of the spiritual 
universe, little even of our own nature, relations, and 
destiny ; but when Christ puts the telescope to our eyes, 
and the measuring-rod in our hands, we can see and 
measure the things of which we had before been dimly 
cognizant or wholly ignorant. The revealed religion of 
the earth is the natural religion of heaven, — would be 
our natural religion, had we sufficiently comprehensive 
and penetrating minds to make it so, — will be our nat- 
ural religion when the scales shall fall from our eyes in 
dying. Christianity, if true, is the fundamental law of 
spiritual being, as constant as the laws of nature, as un- 
changeable as the circuits of the stars. It is the physi- 
ology of the divine and the human spirit, the geography 
of the world of probation, duty, and accountability in 
which we live, the astronomy of those upper heavens 
where are the everlasting mansions of the redeemed. 
This physiology it is of immeasurable importance for man 
to know, that he may act worthily of his nature, — that 
he may not dwarf it, or debase it, or leave it undevel- 
oped. This geography it profoundly concerns him to 
learn, that he may use the world as not abusing it. 



34 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

With this astronomy it is for his highest interest and 
happiness that he become conversant, that from disap- 
pointment, and sorrow, and the death-shadow, when the 
whole lower firmament is darkened, he may lift his eyes 
to those unfading lights that burn around the eternal 
throne.. But, as I showed you in my last Lecture, this is 
a department in which man has not at his own command 
the requisite means of research and sources of knowl- 
edge. I therefore maintain, that not only the contents 
of revelation, but the fact of revelation, belongs to nat- 
ural religion ; that is, that revelation is not only an histor- 
ical fact, but a fact that was to have been anticipated on 
a priori grounds, — - on grounds connected with the na- 
ture of man and of God. 

I. For, first, revelation is a postulate of human nature. 
Its subjects are such as necessarily command the curi- 
osity of the mind only a little raised above a mere animal 
existence. Religion comprises a department in which 
every thoughtful man perceives that there is something 
to be known, — real, objective truth. There comes up 
from the earliest ages that have left us their record the 
cry of the inquiring, longing soul, " O that I knew 
where I might find Him ! Wherewith shall I approach 
Him, and how shall I order my ways before Him ? If a 
man die, shall he live again?" And with this cry comes 
the thought of a revelation, as the only means by which 
it can be answered. The sense of this need found voice 
repeatedly among the philosophers of classic antiquity. 
Iamblichus, in describing the religious belief of Py- 
thagoras and his followers, writes : " It is manifest that 
those things are to be done which are pleasing to God ; 
but what they are it is not easy to know, except man 
were taught them by God himself, or by some person 



REVELATION. 35 

who had received them from God, or obtained the knowl- 
edge of them through some divine means." 1 There is a 
very striking passage in one of Plato's Dialogues, from 
which it would appear that he, or Socrates, in whose 
name he writes, anticipated a revelation as near at hand. 
Socrates meets one of his disciples going to a temple to 
pray, tries to convince him that he knows neither how to 
pray nor what to pray for, and then adds : " It seems 

best to me that we keep quiet It is absolutely 

necessary that we wait with patience, till we know cer- 
tainly how we ought to behave toward God and man. 

Till that time arrives, it may be safer to avoid 

offering sacrifices, of which you know not whether they 
are acceptable to God or not." 2 But the most remarka- 
ble passage of all is in the reply to his arguments for 
immortality put by Plato into the mouth of one of the 
disciples of Socrates : " I agree with you, Socrates, 
that to discover the certain truth of these things in this 
life is absolutely impossible, or at least very difficult. 
Yet not to inquire into what may be said about them, or 
to desist from our inquiry before we have carried it as far 
as possible, is the mark of a mean and low spirit. We 
ouo-ht, therefore, bv all means to do one of these two 
things, — either by hearkening to instruction and by our 
own diligent study to find out the truth, or, if this be im- 
possible, then to fix upon that which to human reason 
appears best and most probable, and to make this our 
raft, while we sail through life, unless we could have a 
more sure and safe conveyance, such as so?ne divine com- 
munication would be." 3 Similar expressions might be 

1 Iiep\ tov UvOayopiKov j3iov 1 Chap. 28. 

8 Second Alcibiades, 22, 23. 

8 Phsedo, 78. \6yov Oeiov twos- 



36 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

multiplied, showing that the religion of nature is through- 
out an interrogative religion, which yearns for an answer 
to its questions from a more than human wisdom. 

In accordance with this view, we find a universal 
appetency for revelation. Sacred books, oracles, proph- 
ets, have always been received with a ready faith. Chris- 
tian missionaries, in earlier and later times, while they 
have often encountered insuperable obstacles, have left 
no record of antecedent scepticism as to the fact of a 
revelation. On the other hand, the very declaration that 
they were bearers of a divine message has in innumera- 
ble instances opened to its reception minds and hearts, 
which would have been stubbornly closed against such 
teachings as they might have promulgated on their own 
authority. 

I know, indeed, that modern deists have disclaimed 
revelation as a postulate of the human soul. But why ? 
Because they have enriched their naturalism with the 
spoils of Christianity. Were we carefully to explore a 
vast and curiously furnished subterranean chamber by 
the light of a torch, we might on a second visit dis- 
cern the shape and size of every object by the few and 
straggling rays of light from the cave's mouth. But let 
another party enter for the first time without a torch, 
they would stumble at every step, and would be able to 
distinguish nothing by the same light by which we had 
seen everything. Modern deists in Christian countries 
had the light of the torch, before they deemed them- 
selves independent of it. The ancients, groping from 
the first in darkness, longed for the. torch, and despaired 
of finding their way without it. 

II. There is antecedent reason in the nature of things 
to suppose that the postulate of the human soul for divine 



REVELATION. 37 

revelation would be satisfied. Unless the religious crav- 
ing be an exception, there is no demand of man that has 
not its answer, no want that is not supplied, no yearning 
that does not find its response. Hunger levies contribu- 
tions on every department of nature, and there is no zone 
or climate that yields not food fit for its inhabitants. For 
thirst there are springs even in the desert, and reservoirs 
in the arid rock. For man's social cravings, provision 
is made in the essential laws and conditions of birth and 
nurture, and in the necessities and mutual dependences 
of even the low r est types of savage life. For the still pro- 
founder need of loving and being loved, there is no rela- 
tion between human beings which has not its instinctive 
and spontaneous action upon the emotional nature, so 
that in the whole commerce of domestic and social life 
there is a perpetual interweaving of more and more fine 
and delicate fibres of sympathy and fellows-feeling. The 
same correlation of demand and supply pervades the 
entire realm of science and knowledge. No class of 
objects or phenomena, however recondite, is presented 
to our curiosity, without means of ascertaining its nature, 
laws, sources, and causes. Among things observed and 
experienced no question is ever asked, and asked per- 
sistently, for which the answer is not lodged within 
the seeker's reach. How profound are the researches, 
how severely accurate the discoveries, constantly made 
as to objects that might seem too vast for comprehen- 
sion, or too minute for cognizance, or too remote for 
precise measurement and analysis ! We mark the per- 
turbations of Uranus, detect the metallic particles in the 
atmosphere of the sun, trace organic life back to its infin- 
itesimal type and outbudding. Meanwhile, here is our 
instinct of reverence, which has no definite object, — our 



38 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

inquiry into supersensual truth, which returns to us as 
void, as unsatisfied, as in the infancy of the race, — our 
earnest onlooking, before which hangs death, no less than 
ever a dense, impenetrable veil. 

Not only are the soul's religious wants profound and 
intense, but mere mental progress and cultivation, so 
far from meeting them, only render them more utterly 
hopeless. Thus in the ruder days of Athens and Rome 
there was doubtless a sincere, and to a certain extent a 
satisfying, faith in the gods of the popular mythology and 
in the fables about Elysium ; while with the growth of 
knowledge, religion on the one hand rationalized itself 
into pantheism, and on the other attenuated itself into 
atheism. 

These religious wants of man, as I showed you in my 
last Lecture, are not susceptible of satisfaction through 
the agency of the human mind, with the instruments of 
inquiry that natively belong to it. But their very ex- 
istence authorizes the assurance that they are satisfied 
somehow or somewhere. Now revelation is to the relig- 
ious wants what food is to hunger, water to thirst, kin- 
dred to the loving heart, scientific truth to the inquiring 
intellect. 

III. There is, also, in the nature of God antecedent 
reason to suppose that he would have made a revelation. 
I will for the present exclude from my argument those 
fatherly attributes of the Divine character, for which we 
are indebted, as I think, to revelation, and which, there- 
fore, we cannot employ in proof of a revelation without 
reasoning in a circle. I will simply assume, what the 
marks of contrivance in the universe certainly demon- 
strate, creative design, that is, creative intelligence ; and 
I will suppose that this intelligence belongs to a single 



REVELATION. 39 

divine mind, though my argument would remain un- 
affected on the hypothesis of dualism, or even of poly- 
theism. 

God made man, — made him not mere brute exist- 
ence, but mind, soul, will, affection. He has made each 
human mind capable of communion with other created 
minds, so that it can take cognizance of their thoughts 
and emotions, and can receive from them knowledge, 
sentiment, and impulse. Is it conceivable that he should 
have shut out from himself the very avenues of com- 
munion which he has opened to created spirits,— that he 
should have put into the hands of his creatures keys 
with which they can unlock every chamber of intellect, 
fancy, and feeling, and can with intimate consciousness 
pervade, as it were, the whole of one another's inward 
being, — and that, as regards himself, he should have 
locked every door' and thrown away the keys? The 
power to open every soul to the direct communion of 
every other soul includes and implies the power to open 
every soul to his own direct communion. The fact that 
he has thus established communion between soul and 
soul, renders it probable that he has also established com- 
munion between himself and the souls of men. 

Still further, we can hardly conceive of God's having 
created intelligent minds, without the will to become 
himself an object of their intelligence, — to be distinctly 
recognized and known by them. So far is the idea of 
revelation from being unnatural, that any mode of com- 
munication would seem more natural than eternal silence. 
To my mind, while some of the early Scriptural narra- 
tives savor so much of anthropomorphism, that I cannot 
object to a somewhat free and allegorical interpretation 
of them, the literal sense — according to which the voice 



40 



CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 



of the Almighty was heard in the garden in the cool of 
the day, was listened and replied to by the first-born 
among men, was made audible to the patriarch in his 
tent, and to Samuel in his bed hard by the ark of the 
covenant — has a naturalness, a reality, a lifelikeness, O, 
immeasurably greater than the heartless theory accord- 
ing to which the Creator has abandoned his offspring to 
perpetual orphanhood, has cut himself off forever from 
their conscious intercourse with him, has given them no 
authentic and incontrovertible tokens of his being, his 
nature, and their relation to him. 

Again, man must have been created w T ith some definite 
design or purpose on the part of the Creator, as to the 
development and exercise of his moral and active powers. 
It is impossible that God should not have a will as to the 
dispositions and deeds of his intelligent offspring, and 
laws which he would have them obey. On all the rest 
of creation he has impressed his will and law, and all 
things are obedient thereunto. Inanimate nature is 
bound by adamantine chains of immutable law. The 
fiat, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further," throbs 
in every pulse of air and ocean, in the waves of light and 
sound, in growth, vicissitude, catastrophe, and disintegra- 
tion. Instinct in animals attends and attests design, and 
not one of them can transcend or fall short of his mani- 
fest place, office, and purpose in the universe. Man 
alone has an autonomic will, the power of choice between 
good and evil, between parallel courses of seeming good, 
between like, diverse, or opposite aims. Man alone is 
capable of obeying or disobeying law. And no one 
doubts that there are laws in obeying which he fulfils 
the purpose, works out the destiny, for which he was 

oated. But he is capable of attaining to the knowledge 



REVELATION. 41 

of those laws only approximately and imperfectly. He 
had a fair opportunity and ah open field, room for the 
trial of all kinds of moral experiments, ample time for 
ascertaining the right and the good, in the thousands of 
years that preceded the Christian era. He had all the 
lights of prolonged experience, profound philosophy, high 
and varied civilization. And with w r hat results ? As we 
have seen, there had been attained nothing that can now 
be regarded as a perfect system of ethics. There was no 
vice which had not its apologists, no virtue which had not 
its detractors, among the wisest and best men of their 
day. Nay, some essential virtues were not even recog- 
nized by name, or were regarded as tokens of imbecility. 
Moreover, if Jesus Christ was not a revealer of God's 
will, his system must be ranked among the most grossly 
vicious ethical systems of antiquity ; for Christianity, if 
not a divine revelation, pretended to be one, was foisted 
in upon the world by a gigantic imposture, and therefore 
can never reckon veracity and honesty in its catalogue 
of virtues. Now it is incredible that an intelligent Cre- 
ator should, with a definite design, have created a race 
of free moral agents, have made them incapable of ascer- 
taining by the best exercise of their own powers what he 
would have them do and abstain from, and yet at no 
time and in no way have given them direct instruction as 
to his will and law. 

If we further assume the Divine benignity and mercy, 
which most writers on natural theology regard as proved 
independently of revelation, our argument becomes still 
stronger. Benignity in its very essence craves recogni- 
tion and communion. Love does not conceal itself from 
those whom it blesses. If God be a father, his paternal 
attributes of necessity involve self-revelation. That he 



42 CHRISTIANITY THE -RELIGION OF NATURE. 

should have left his being to be inferred or surmised ; 
that he should have given his children neither instruc- 
tion, warning, assurance, nor hope ; that he should have 
wrapt them in impenetrable and invincible ignorance, as 
to the greater part of what they yearn to know con- 
cerning him ; that he should have suffered those of them 
who would gladly do his will to be bewildered and 
doubtful as regards that will ; that he should have aban- 
doned the less dutiful to waywardness and guilt, without 
a single appeal to that filial feeling which often lies deep 
in the very worst heart, and becomes an efficient means 
of repentance and reformation ; this is so atrociously 
unfatherly, — so utterly opposed to what our own natural 
affection renders probable, that we must set it aside as 
an untenable hypothesis. The fatherhood of God and 
revelation, then, suppose and imply each other. If the 
former be a doctrine, the latter is equally a postulate, 
of natural religion. If God has withdrawn himself for- 
ever from direct communication with men, then, what- 
ever else may be his relation to them, — Creator, Sov- 
ereign, Judge, — he is not their Father. 

On these grounds we claim that revelation rests for 
its intrinsic probability on the basis of natural religion. 
The denial of revelation rejects the fatherhood of God, 
casts doubt on his benignity, negatives the inferences 
that flow from intelligent design, and, if it does not land 
us in atheism, plunges us into the hardly less dreary mist 
and rayless gloom of pantheism, of a self-energizing and 
self-organizing nature, an animus or anima mundi, which 
can be the object of neither trust, reverence, nor love. 

Here we are met by the objection, — On these 
grounds revelation should have been primeval and uni- 



REVELATION. 43 

versal. I answer, in the first place, that to no one who 
admits that God has ever made a revelation of himself 
will a primeval revelation appear improbable, to few 
doubtful. If we admit the authenticity of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, revelation was coeval with the creation of 
man. The religious history of mankind as recorded in 
the Old Testament corresponds with what on a priori 
grounds might seem natural and probable on the part of 
a father God ; — frequent direct interposition in the in- 
fancy of the race ; rudimentary instruction and progres- 
sive methods of discipline during its adolescence ; a full 
and final disclosure of truth, law, motive, sanction, rec- 
ompense, for its maturity. And while I believe that 
Christianity may stand firmly on its own basis and be 
authenticated by its own evidence, I contend that, as 
the close and consummation of a series of revelations, it 
presents the more manifest tokens of its accordance with 
nature, with the progressive development of art, science, 
and civilization, with the law of growth and the sucession 
of epochs, which we trace everywhere in creation, read in 
the strata of the earth's surface, and discern even in the 
genesis of the solar system and the stellar universe. 

Leaving Scripture aside, we have numerous vestiges 
of a primeval revelation. A theogony, a birth of the 
gods, forms a part of the mythology of all nations, — 
fabulous tradition thus running back to a time when the 
popular deities had not begun to be, and generally to a 
time when there was a single divinity, whose offspring 
were subsequently born to a rival or superior godship. 
This tradition has for its only possible historical interpre- 
tation a pristine state in which men worshipped one God, 
(how taught, except by revelation from himself?) and 
from which they gradually lapsed into hero, nature, or 



44 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

idol worship. Of parallel import is the tradition which 
represents a Saturnian age, a state of simplicity, justice, 
and innocence, a divine rule recognized and felt among 
men, as the earliest phasis of society, and fraud, violence, 
and sensuality as intruding forces through which the 
earth ceased to be a paradise. This, translated into his- 
tory, means that the knowledge of the right and the 
good was in the keeping of the fathers of the race, (how 
but by revelation ?) and was lost by their posterity. 

Now, if there was a primeval revelation, the fact of its 
loss by the greater part of mankind is in accordance with 
the analogy of nature ; for both the influence of charac- 
ter on belief, and the suffering of children and posterity 
from the faults, crimes, and guilt of parents and ancestors, 
are well known and universally recognized laws. Pure 
and noble beliefs cannot be retained with a corrupt heart, 
or transmitted by a corrupt ancestry. In all time, moral 
depravity has left its trail on the intellect, and each gen- 
eration has inherited the errors and falsities of the pre- 
ceding age. Had man's religious belief and growth 
obeyed other laws, then religion would have been an 
anomaly in human nature ; and if revelation had been 
subject to other laws, then revelation would have been 
anomalous and unnatural. Is it maintained that a su- 
premely good Creator* could not but have replaced the 
forgotten revelation, everywhere and in each generation, 
by new communications from himself? In order to this, 
he must have abrogated the law by which children in- 
herit mentally and morally from their parents, — a law 
which is of unspeakable benefit as a constant motive to 
healthful activity and diligence, and an effective agent in 
human progress and improvement. Indeed, successive 
generations could not be sustained as moral beings, were 



REVELATION. 45 

there a direct interposition to replace the losses of each 
generation, and to restore the children to privileges for- 
feited by the parents. In a world so constituted, there 
might be a splendid pageant of divine administration, but 
there could be no human forethought, energy or self- 
dependence. 

But it may be asked, Why should Christianity, the 
perfect religion, have been withheld from the first four 
thousand years of human history ? Be it true or false, 
does not its arbitrary promulgation at a precise period of 
time take it wholly out of the range of natural develop- 
ment, so that it must stand or fall on its claims as ab- 
solutely supernatural ? I answer, that if there was no 
reason other than the sovereign, unconditioned will of 
the Creator for the epoch of its promulgation, — if it 
would have taken its place as fitly at an earlier or a later 
period, — then the question concerning it has no perti- 
nency in our discussion of natural religion. But, on the 
other hand, if Christ came in the fulness of time, when 
the world was prepared for him, no sooner, no later, then 
was his advent as natural as are the phenomena of the suc- 
cessive seasons, and there is as much philosophical exact- 
ness as poetical beauty in those sacred words commonly 
applied to him : " He shall come down like rain upon 
the grass, as showers that water the earth." Let us try 
the question. 

The leading characteristic of Christianity is, that its 
disclosures reach through eternity, — that its sanctions 
are drawn from a retribution beyond the grave. It is 
only civilized man that can be efficiently influenced by 
motives of this class. The roving savage has neither the 
power nor the habit of calculating and depending on the 
future. He knows not and cares not what will be on the 



46 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

morrow. He has no permanent residence, but pitches or 
strikes his tent as the caprice of the moment may dictate. 
He lays no plans, exercises no forethought, ventures no 
predictions, and lives entirely in the past and present. . 
There is nothing in his mode of subsistence, which should 
make him dwell with either hope, doubt, or fear on the 
future. To impress on such minds a profound and endur- 
ing sense of a distant and limitless future, is in the nature 
of things impossible. Modern missionaries have found 
and pronounced it so, 'and the wisest of them are now 
disposed to admit that they must civilize heathen nations 
in order to Christianize them, and that they must there- 
fore imitate the patience of Him who, though he pur- 
posed man's redemption from the foundation of the 
world, waited forty centuries or more for the fulness of 
time to arrive. 

Now this wandering, unsettled life was the natural 
condition of the human race in its early infancy. It was 
the condition of the major part of the race for many 
centuries. It was the condition of the Jews and of most 
of the Asiatics in the time of Moses. Hence the appro- 
priateness, and therefore the naturalness, of the Mosaic 
revelation. A religion with temporal sanctions was pre- 
cisely what the Hebrews and the age of the Exodus 
needed. Christianity was too far-reaching, too spiritual, 
for the apprehension and faith of such a horde of nomads 
as the exiles from Egypt, . — a horde much resembling 
those that now range over the steppes of Tartary. I re- 
gard it as one of the most manifest tokens of the Divine 
origin of the Mosaic system, that it was silent with re- 
gard to a future life, and promulgated temporal rewards 
and punishments alone. This was as far as the fore- 
thought of the people and the age of the great lawgiver 



REVELATION. 4 1 

i 

could go, and the attempt to draw motives from beyond 
the confines of mortality would have been useless and 
abortive. 

But the institutions of Moses gradually changed his 
nation from a pastoral into an agricultural people, from a 
wandering into a settled community, and introduced 
anions them the arts and refinements of civilization. 
Meanwhile the same process was going on in many lands, 
and was culminating in Southern Europe. In morals 
there was indeed no progress, nay, rather a retrograde 
movement. But civilized man always acquires the habit 
of looking forward to the future and providing for it, of 
looking far along the ages and laying plans for the ben- 
efit of even remote posterity. Civilized life cherishes 
forethought, and makes men live more in the future than 
in the past or present. This forecasting habit had its 
genesis and growth in the leading nations between Moses 
and Christ. With it had sprung up everywhere a vague 
belief in man's immortality ; for, as soon as men thought 
of the future, the instinctive desire of continued exist- 
ence took an objective shape, and, though without ade- 
quate proof, assumed a strong hold on the faith of large 
classes of enlightened men, both Jews and Gentiles. 
Thus, in a civilization, corrupt indeed, yet endowed with 
forethought, and prepared to occupy the domain in the 
eternal future offered to its belief and endeavor, was a 
matrix provided for the birth and growth of Christianity. 

At this time, too, not only was civilization in the 
ascendant, but almost the whole civilized world had 
become united in the JRoman Empire, so that every 
pulsation of intellectual and spiritual life was felt across 
continents, and almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
shore of the Eastern hemisphere. The union of so many 



48 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

and diverse nations under a single sovereignty multi- 
plied avenues and modes of intercourse, created a com- 
munity of language and of thought, and thus presented 
a more favorable condition of the world for the promul- 
gation of a religion fitted to be universal, than had ever 
existed before, or has recurred until the present century. 
Had Christ come earlier, he would, as we have seen, 
have found men too unsettled and improvident in their 
worldly habits to accept a religion whose treasures w r ere 
to be laid up in heaven. Had he come later, even the 
area of civilization would have been contracted in the 
decline of the Roman Empire ; while there would have 
been wanting the general currency of the Greek tongue, 
the far-reaching filaments of international union, and the 
homogeneous elements which, notwithstanding the vast 
diversity of races, pervaded the Empire in its palmy 
days, and favored the almost simultaneous diffusion of 
the new religion throughout the civilized world. But if 
Christianity was thus promulgated at the very time when 
need, preparation, and opportunity concurred to crave, 
foster, and diffuse it, then was its advent postulated by 
man's and God's nature. Its Author's birth and life, 
miracles and resurrection, supernatural though they be 
in the common acceptation of that word, are in a pro- 
founder sense pre-eminently natural ; and had that age 
passed away unmarked by the coming of Him whose 
name makes it illustrious for all eternity, what would 
have been called the natural order and sequence of 
human experiences and earthly events would have been 
in the last degree unnatural. 

If the argument of this Lecture is not fallacious, I have 
shown you that the antecedent probability of revelation 



REVELATION. 49 

is a doctrine of natural religion. Let it not be thought 
that this is a matter of mere words, and that the ques- 
tion of the truth or falsity of Christianity is in no wise 
affected by our vindicating or disclaiming for it a coinci- 
dence with natural religion. It has been the habit of 
Christian writers and preachers to represent the Chris- 
tian revelation as something abnormal, exceptional, in 
antagonism to nature, an intrusion on the order of 
creation, and therefore not antecedently probable or 
intrinsically credible. It has not been unusual to admit 
that the facts connected with the promulgation of Chris- 
tianity are in themselves improbable, and then to set 
over against them the still greater improbability that the 
array and mass of human testimony in behalf of those 
facts should be false. Now this weighing of opposite 
improbabilities is a delicate and doubtful process, and few 
minds hold so even a balance as to be safely intrusted 
with it. That which is in itself improbable, is made 
scarcely less so by the heaping up of remote testimony, 
however strong. With the temper of the present age, 
prone to question authority and to rely on intrinsic cri- 
teria of truth, an argument like that of Paley's Evi- 
dences is full as apt to create scepticism as to confirm 
belief. 

No one can attach a higher value than I do to the 
attestations to the genuineness and authenticity of the 
Gospels so industriously gathered by Paley, Lardner, 
and the great divines of their school. To my mind, 
no series of events in ancient history stands on so 
solid a basis of human testimony as that which sustains 
the history of Jesus Christ, with its inseparable accom- 
paniment of marvel and miracle. But I confess that 
this testimony seems to me immeasurably stronger in 
3 D 



50 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

behalf of what is intrinsically probable and natural, than 
it would in behalf of facts in themselves unnatural and 
improbable. Testimony should never have an unneces- 
sary strain laid upon it. It is adequate to confirm wha/t 
it is inadequate to establish. Even in a court of justice, 
the skilled advocate deems it necessary to make the 
theory of his case a programme for his evidence, and 
is very chary of producing witnesses whose testimony 
diverges from that theory, even though it be substan- 
tially on his side ; and circumstantial evidence which 
establishes an assumed theory of a case is more likely to 
break down opposing witnesses, than to be neutralized by 
them. Of the testimony for the Gospel history, the lim- 
itations of my present course will not allow me to treat. 
But my argument is this : The testimony — varied 
and strong — which may be adduced in corroboration of 
the genuineness and truth of the Gospels is urged in 
behalf of what is intrinsically natural and probable, inde- 
pendently of testimony. The Divine nature is virtually 
pledged to reveal itself. Revelation has its place in the 
circle of natural needs, of necessary truths. The Chris- 
tian revelation, coming as it did when the world was best 
fitted to receive it, meets an inherent want, a universal 
craving of mankind, the desire of all nations, the proph- 
ecy of all antecedent ages, the earnest postulate of the 
religion of nature. 



LECTURE III. 

MIRACLES. 

In my last Lecture I showed you that natural religion 
renders revelation probable. But revelation needs to be 
authenticated. Unless authenticated, it is no revelation. 
It is maintained, however, by many, that divine truth 
finds its sufficient evidence in the human consciousness, 
and that therefore any authority from without is super- 
fluous, and intrinsically improbable. The following is a 
fair statement of a theory, which has among its advocates 
not a few ingenious thinkers and excellent men of our 
time, and which seems to be the phasis of belief enter- 
tained by the greater part of the latitudinarian members 
of the English Church, whose recent writings have at- 
tracted so much attention on both sides of the Atlantic. 
The Hebrew prophets, the Christian apostles, and Jesus 
Christ himself, were neither the subjects nor the workers 
of miracles. They were good men, Christ pre-eminently 
good. All men, in proportion to their moral capacity, 
are the recipients of teaching and inspiration from God, 
and these men, from the intensity of their religious 
genius, had a larger capacity of divine illumination than 
belongs even to the better portion of mankind in gen- 
eral. But they had no other authority than that which 
accrued to them from their superior capacity and excel- 
lence. They stood in no official relation to mankind, 
other than that which we should bear if we had similar 



52 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

capacity and excellence. Their teachings address them- 
selves to our receptivity, and are truth to us only so far 
as they accord with whatever of divine illumination there 
is in us. Our inspiration is the only test and touchstone 
of theirs. What we do not feel to be true, we have no 
reason for believing to be true. What is not in our own 
consciousness is none the more sacred to us because it 
entered into their belief. They were not incapable of 
error in matters of religion, and we are right in rejecting 
as error whatever in their teachings does not harmonize 
with our highest conceptions of God, of duty, and of a 
future life. 

To this theory I would reply, first, that it covers only 
a portion of the ground occupied by the Scriptures and 
religious teachings. There are, I grant, some subjects 
of prime importance, as to which we may verify the truth 
by our own consciousness, and as to which the conscious- 
ness of a sincerely good man may be regarded as infalli- 
ble. This is the case with cardinal virtues and funda- 
mental duties. The consciousness of every man who has 
obeyed the precepts of. the Sermon on the Mount attests 
their coincidence with the Eternal Right. I trust that 
there are many of you whose belief in the Beatitudes 
with which that Sermon commences could not be made 
stronger, were they at this moment miraculously repub- 
lished in your hearing. The interior consciousness, closely 
interrogated, also confirms the reality of a righteous ret- 
ribution, which works in the soul's experience even when 
it leaves no outward sign. But there are other depart- 
ments of religious truth, as to which even moral perfec- 
tion might fail to give certain knowledge, and in which 
consciousness offers no adequate test. Thus, as I showed 
you in a former Lecture, a good man's mere desire for 



MIRACLES. 53 

continued existence, and his opinion in accordance with 
that desire, are no proof of immortality. There may, for 
aught we know, be physiological reasons why life should 
cease when the body dies ; and if so, no height of moral 
excellence or of spiritual illumination could authenticate 
the heart-testimony to immortality which would still be 
borne by a soul fitted for the life eternal, and debarred 
from it only by physical hinderances too occult for its 
appreciation. In this matter we crave not the conscious- 
ness of one who feels, but assurance from one who 
knows : and who can know unless he has learned directly 
from God ? To specify another subject of prime practical 
importance, one of the most interesting of all questions 
is, whether God exercises a paternal providence over us 
individually, or whether we live under an administration 
generally beneficent, but under which the individual 
may be a sufferer and a victim without offset or coun- 
tervailing benefit. Now the best man that ever lived 
cannot by virtue of his goodness enter into the Divine 
consciousness. He may be fully persuaded of the benig- 
nity of the Creator, — he may earnestly crave all that the 
Christian believes about the providence of God ; yet so 
conceivable is it as to have been the belief of many 
excellent men, that this minute individual providence 
is in the nature of things impossible. None can resolve 
this question except on the direct authority of the Divine 
mind. 

Again, it is admitted that the consciousness of spiritual 
truth belongs only to the highly developed moral nature. 
One knows by consciousness only what he has experi- 
enced. The safety and blessedness of virtue have en- 
tered into the consciousness of none except the virtuous. 
But bad men are as much in need of religious truth as 



54 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

good men, and to them it must come from without, 
before they can have its evidence within. They must 
be led to virtuous acts before they can have the self-con- 
sciousness of virtuous men. And in order to secure their 
belief, and so to induce them to make their first experi- 
ments of moral truths which they will subsequently know 
by experience, there must be teaching that shall rest on 
recognized and infallible authority. 

There is, then, need not merely of Divine illumination, 
but of authoritative revelation, first, to give good men the 
certainty of those things beyond the scope of consciousness 
which it concerns them to know, and, secondly, to assure 
bad men of those moral and spiritual facts and truths, the 
knowledge of which may lead to their repentance and 
reformation. 

There are two methods in which this knowledge 
might be communicated. It might, in the first place, be 
given to every human being in some way in which he 
could recognize it as Divine revelation. This, however, 
would overbear moral agency, annul the power of choice, 
and make virtue and piety involuntary and inevitable, 
and therefore characteristics not of self-determining in- 
dividual wills, but of a race of automatons, passively 
subjected to the Supreme Will. 

The second alternative method is to commit Divine 
revelation to individuals chosen for that purpose, and to 
render it liable to those conditions of investigation, proof, 
and acceptance or rejection, which are attached to all 
other subjects on which man is left to exercise his func- 
tions as a free moral agent. This desideratum is met by 
a revelation resting on evidence adequate, yet not irre- 
sistible, — within the reach of inquirers, yet not forced 
upon them against their will, — open to scepticism, yet 



MIRACLES. 55 

with ample resources for converting honest scepticism into 
confident belief. But in what must this evidence con- 
sist ? I answer in one word, In miracle, that is, in phe- 
nomena aside from the usual course of nature, which are 
equivalent to the direct voice or the manifest seal of God. 
We can conceive of no other way in which a revelation 
can be promulgated as such. God without miracle 
might impart to the mind of an individual man so strong 
a persuasion of certain truths that he should absolutely 
know them to be true. But he has in that case no tan- 
gible, communicable evidence of these truths. To any 
other mind they are simply his opinions, not God's rev- 
elation. If he proclaims them, it must be on his own 
authority, backed by such reasoning as he can command, 
and if they lie beyond the sphere of consciousness, by no 
conclusive reasoning. But let him perform such an act 
as none can perform by the exercise of his own powers ; 
let him give sight to a man born blind, or hearing to one 
born deaf; let him lift a dead man alive from the bier, or 
call forth from the sepulchre one who has lain there four 
days, — then, if he talks of duty, God, and heaven, if he 
proclaims truths beyond the realm of consciousness, his 
hearers know that they are virtually listening to the 
voice of God, that the Divine testimony attests his utter- 
ance, and that his words are absolutely and infallibly 
true. 

It is said, indeed, and rightly, that a physical fact can- 
not prove a spiritual truth. But it may attest a truth- 
teller. It may invest him with the right to be believed. 
The scepticism that actually exists in the community 
concerns the occurrence or the possibility of miracles, 
not their trustworthiness as testimony. There may be 
among you, perhaps, some who do not believe in mira- 



56 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

cles ; but were an undoubted miracle to be performed 
this moment in your sight, and were he who performed 
it to connect with it such statements with regard to 
unseen, spiritual, future things as you had never heard 
before, there is not one of you who would not believe all 
that he said. 

The proof of the miracles recorded in the Bible, it 
forms no part of my plan to present. But in the residue 
of this Lecture I shall attempt to show you that miracles 
belong to the religion of nature. 

Miracles are, in the first place, a demand of human 
nature, and an almost universal belief of mankind. They 
enter into the traditions of every people, and either lie 
at the basis, or are incorporated with the legends, of 
every religion. Even religious unbelief does not rid the 
soul of the appetency for them. We have the record 
of not a few cases in which avowed infidels, even athe- 
ists, have been tortured by superstitious fears, and vic- 
timized by feeble credulity as to apparitions and events 
aside from the common course of human experience. 
Every brief reign of infidelity has been succeeded by a 
recoil toward easy belief in marvels and w r onders from 
the unseen world. At the present moment, the procliv- 
ity toward the dominant form of necromancy is immeas- 
urably stronger among those who reject than among 
those who receive the Christian miracles. None are so 
ready to give heed to the drivellings and insane vaticina- 
tions of hyper-electrified women personating the voices 
and desecrating the memories of the honored dead, as 
those who deny the resurrection of Christ. The in- 
stances of the utter non-receptivity of miracles, even in 
this sceptical age, are less numerous than those of con- 



MIRACLES. 57 

genital malformation or of idiocy ; while during many- 
periods of the world's history they have been too sparse 
to leave either record or memorial. So far is the uni- 
formity of nature from being a fundamental law of human 
belief, that appetency for the abnormal might with much 
greater fitness be deemed an element of man's nature, 
the sporadic exceptions to it seeming little else than 
defective specimens of their race. The multitude of 
confessedly false reports of miracles only strengthens 
my statement ; for, if miracles not only have never taken 
place, but are opposed to the laws of belief, how is it that 
the entire history of belief is full of them ? Counterfeits 
imply a genuine paradigm. The eleven false ancilia in 
the temple of Mars were forged after the pattern of the 
one that fell from heaven. Fiction takes its rise only 
from verisimilitude, and obtains currency only by its 
analogy to fact. 

The true interpretation of the appetency for the mar- 
vellous is in this wise. Because man is spirit as well as 
body, and gravitates toward the unseen future while he 
lives in the present, there is a demand in his nature that 
the barrier between the material and the spiritual be at 
some point ruptured, the veil between the seen and the 
unseen somewhere parted, the realm of the dead revealed 
to the knowledge of the living. In no age, under no 
culture, has this demand been silent or inactive. It has 
interrogated the stars, peered into the entrails of slaugh- 
tered victims, explored the seat of life in human sacrifices, 
enacted the foul and horrible orgies of magic and witch- 
craft. And Christianity is natural religion, because it 
meets this demand, and satisfies this need, — because it 
has its authentic voices from the parted heavens, its 
manifest forth-reachings of the everlasting arms, its souls 
3* 



58 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

rendered back from the death-slumber, its immortality- 
made manifest in the risen Jesus, — because it answers 
the questions which man cannot help asking, and feeds 
the desires which are as inseparably a part of his being 
as are love and memory and hope. 

I would next remind you that miracles, so far from 
being inconsistent with the known system of nature, 
have confessedly constituted a large part of the history 
of the physical universe. By a miracle we denote an 
event which occurs without any proximate cause adapted 
to produce it. What, then, was each separate creative 
act of the Almighty, if not a miracle ? The races of 
organized beings now succeed one another by established 
laws ; but the first man, the first elephant, the first bird, 
the first tree, was a miracle. There was no antecedent 
physical cause for the shape, or size, or organization of 
the first-born of each family. The details might have 
been indefinitely varied without any failure of adaptation 
to surrounding objects. Man might have had as many 
eyes as the spider, the dove might have had four wings, 
the ox a trunk like the elephant's, so far as any antece- 
dent reason was concerned. If we suppose an intelligent 
witness of the creation, each new substance, each organ- 
ized form, each living being, must have been as literally in 
his eyes a miracle, an effect without a material cause, a 
direct act of the Omnipotent Will on lifeless matter, as to 
us would be the sudden reappearance alive of a man 
whom we knew to have been dead. And on the very 
grounds on which miracles are objected to as inconsistent 
with the laws of nature, and unworthy of the immutable 
Creator, an intelligent being who had existed before the 
earth was inhabited might in subsequent ages have 
refused to believe that it had any inhabitants, and have 



MIRACLES. '>;> 

pronounced his brother-spirits who professed to have 
seen thenrtmpostors or dupes ; for not an act of forming 
power or organizing wisdom can have obeyed any law 
but the attributes of Him to whom all things wise and 
good are possible. The objector to miracles can have no 
more appropriate or logical answer than those w r ords in 
the poem of Job, which the Almighty utters out of the 
whirlwind : " Where wast thou when I laid the foun- 
dations of the earth ? Hast thou entered into the 
springs of the sea ? Or hast thou walked in the search 
of the depth ? Had the gates of death been opened 
unto thee ? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow 
of death ? Knowest thou because thou wast then born ? 
Or because the number of thy days is great ? " When 
I contemplate the diversity of the creation, the infin- 
ity of resources which it exhibits, the miracles beyond 
thought which it offers to our view, dull, leaden uni- 
formity from the creation onward seems the least prob- 
able theory. I expect to see the leading epochs in the 
spiritual, as they were in the material universe, marked 
by miracle : new life for men's souls attended and at- 
tested by visible signs of Omnipotence ; the promulga- 
tion of the Divine truth and love accompanied by the 
shaking of the powers of nature, and the upheaving of 
restored animation from the realms of the dead. 

But it may be alleged that, whatever may have taken 
place in the beginning, man has had experience only of a 
uniform system and inflexible laws. This, however, you 
will perceive, is denied by the only authority on which 
it can be asserted, — human testimony. We can know 
that miracles have not occurred only by the consenting 
negative testimony of all mankind, and we have seen 
that the vast preponderance of man's testimony is in the 



60 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

affirmative, — that the belief in miracles is almost uni- 
versal. 1 

Let us, however, examine this question of uniformity 
by the light of science. That in the highest sense of the 
word the system is uniform, I cannot doubt ; for it can- 
not be otherwise than consistent in all its parts with 
the attributes of its sole Creator and Supreme Legislator. 
There can be no contrasts that are not comprehended in 
a broader generalization, no discords that are not em- 
braced in a more subtile harmony, no divergent ten- 
dencies which do not beyond human vision converge in 
ends worthy of the wisdom, declarative of the love, of 
Him from whom behind human vision they issued on 
their several tracks and missions. But in the common 
acceptation of the term, the system of the universe is not 
uniform. Astronomy reveals no unvarying type in the 
structure, environments, and movements of the heavenly 
bodies. There are in the remotest outlying provinces of 
telescopic vision nebulae unresolved, and, as is believed 
by many astronomers, unresolvable. It matters not 
whether these nebulae are in the process of consolida- 
tion, but at earlier stages of their physical history than 
the stars which present a sharply defined disk, or whether 
they are permanent conglomerations of nebulous matter. 
In either case, the field of telescopic vision presents as 
concurrently under the Divine jurisdiction two different 
classes of celestial bodies, which must of necessity mani- 
fest unlike phenomena, be controlled by different orders 
of physical laws, and bear widely different relations to 

1 Hume's celebrated argument against miracles is a mere petitio principii. 
He assumes, in defiance of multitudinous testimony to the contrary, that 
miracles are opposed to the experience of mankind, and maintains that there- 
fore no testimony can substantiate them, — forgetting that the experience of 
mankind can be ascertained only by testimony. 



MIKACLES. 61 

their secondaries, if they are centres of systems, and to 
animated nature if they are, either or both, inhabited. 
The binary stars, revolving about their common centre 
of gravity, hold an anomalous place in the heavens ; for 
the mutual relations of each pair of these celestial gemini, 
and their relations to other heavenly bodies, can be 
neither explained by analogies drawn from our solar 
system, nor embraced in our theories of the single stars. 
In our own system, too, there are wide diversities. The 
diurnal rotation of the planets — the most important of 
all their movements, if we consider them as inhabited 
worlds — divides them into two classes, the smaller and 
nearer planets having days more than twice as long as 
those of Jupiter and Saturn. The unequal distribution 
of satellites in the system, the solitary revolution of Mars, 
the gorgeous retinue of Jupiter, the marvellous environ- 
ment of Saturn, are differences which science blends in 
no theory, legitimizes by no laws, harmonizes by no 
sweeping generalization, but can only point to the inscru- 
table will of Him who has made one star to differ from 
another star in glory. The comets, too, remain anoma- 
lies in the system. What uses they subserve, what 
dreary depths or glorious heights of space they penetrate 
in their aphelion, we know not, and on earth can never 
know. Hardly to be recognized by marks of identity 
when they are reputed to return, or, if cognizable, never 
keeping tryst with the astronomer, but before or behind 
his appointed time, it may be doubted whether they are 
better understood now than when their advent spread 
terror among the nations ; and in them are the hidings 
of His power, and a stern rebuke on the arrogance which 
would limit the outgoings of Omnipotence, drop the line 
and plummet of ignorance into the fathomless abyss of 



62 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

the Divine counsels, and circumscribe the immeasurable 
creation within laws and limits of its own devising. 
Equally irreducible to any comprehensive hypothesis are 
the asteroids, — that cluster of planets so strangely mul- 
tiplying under the telescope where our antecedent theo- 
ries might lead us to look but for one. Has there been a 
miracle in that region of the heavens ? We have indeed 
set aside the old notion of disruption from some im- 
pinging contact or explosive force, and the kindred sup- 
position that moral causes have left the record of an 
outraged Deity's righteous displeasure in a shattered 
world. But why this pristine parting of the nebulous 
ring, which, for aught that we can see to the contrary, 
might have globed itself in undivided unity ? Suffice it 
to say, that here is a diversity with no cause that we can 
trace, a lacuna in our system of the universe, a caveat 
against the presumption that would crowd within its own 
narrow hypotheses all the possibilities of nature. Whence 
come the meteoric stones ? Of origin foreign to our 
planet, or at least proceeding from sources that elude 
our search, their motions reducible to no known law, they 
indicate that we are surrounded by forces which we can- 
not measure or calculate, that there are ordinances of the 
heavens which we have not yet learned to register ; and 
they may well make us cautious in applying the limita- 
tions of our theories to events, if more significant to us, 
not one whit more abnormal, which may have occurred 
in connection with the religious history of our own 
planet. 

I doubt not that there are intelligences that can trace 
and comprehend the perfect harmony of the universe, 
and can see the vast circumference of creation girdled by 
the inscription, " God is one." The point which I would 



MIRACLES. 63 

urge is this, — In the system of the material universe 
there is seeming diversity, and even contrariety of plan, 
where we believe that there is only harmony and unity. 
We, therefore, have no reason to deny that in the ad- 
ministration of human affairs there may have been like 
seeming diversity and contrariety, as there must have 
been, if at certain periods and at certain places the action 
of proximate causes has been suspended, and Omnipo- 
tence has wrought on material forms with no intervening 
agency. As to anomalies in outward nature, we accept 
the testimony, not of our own senses, but of competent 
and disinterested scientific observers ; — in the case of 
miracles we have the testimony of competent and more 
than disinterested eye and ear witnesses, — more than 
disinterested T say; for loss, shame, stripes, and death 
were the price expected and paid for their testimony. 

But there still lies in many minds so profound a sense 
of the inviolableness of general laws, as to make them 
sceptical as to miracles, though sustained by the strongest 
evidence. We shall be prepared to discuss the inviola- 
bleness of general laws when we have proved their 
existence. Their existence is a mere assumption, proba- 
ble, plausible, but resting on no positive ground of 
knowledge or necessary inference. That certain conse- 
quents which we call effects are wont to follow certain 
antecedents which we call causes, we indeed know, and 
to the extent of these regular sequences we can expect, 
plan, and act with confidence. But how numerous are 
the events which we cannot calculate, — as to which the 
philosopher of the nineteenth century after Christ has as 
little foresight as the barbarian of the nineteenth century 
before Christ ! How know we that what we call gen- 
eral laws extend any further than is needed to assist our 



64 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

calculations ? How know we that beyond this very 
limited range a discretionary Providence may not be 
the only law ? Mark, — I by no means assert this, — 
I am not inclined to believe it ; but he who objects to 
well-authenticated, but anomalous facts, on the ground 
of general laws, is bound to demonstrate those laws 
before he uses them in argument. 

This demonstration is rendered the more difficult by 
the results, or rather the non-results, of inquiry into 
efficient physical causes. Six thousand years of research 
have failed to reveal in matter inherent powers that 
produce motion, organization, growth, transformation. 
We talk, indeed, of gravitation, caloric, electricity, mag- 
netism, as if we knew what they are ; yet these are but 
euphemisms for our ignorance, — fence-words set up at 
the outermost limit of our knowledge. In the impossi- 
bility of detecting, and even of imagining, an inherent 
force in brute matter, we are constrained to refer all 
power to mind, intelligence, volition ; and the latest 
phasis of physical science, which represents force as one, 
and its forms as mutually convertible, is but the philo- 
sophic expression of the anthem of all pure and clear- 
seeing spirits in heaven and on earth, " Of Him, and 
through Him, and to Him are all things." 

There is nothing, then, in the laws or forces of.nature, 
which forbids our belief in the occurrence of events that 
seem abnormal, if there have been epochs in the Divine 
administration when such events could best subserve the 
purposes of the Creator. Nature is synonymous with 
God. Whatever is consistent with his attributes is 
natural. But it is not natural that we should know all 
that it was ever possible for God to do, — that his admin- 
istration should be in all its parts level with our approx- 



MIRACLES. 65 

imate philosophy of matter and of mind. Yet the entire 
argument of Baden Powell, the most able and reverent 
among the recent expositors of naturalism, is utterly 
baseless, if it be once admitted that the scope of Powell's 
mind is less than coextensive with the Supreme Intelli- 
gence. Were we to take even the popular view of mira- 
cles, as the mere arbitrary setting aside of the natural 
course of events, of the usual order of cause and effect, 
I know not why He who ordained and governs that 
course and order may not have suspended it at His pleas- 
ure and for His own benign purposes. His decree is the 
immediate cause of every death that takes place, as truly 
as it would be were death the exception, and continued 
life the rule ; and if the death-bed, the bier, and the 
sepulchre have in some single instances rendered back 
their dead, this was manifestly as much within the scope 
of His power as it is to decree the death of those who are 
daily dying all the world over. If we assume that at 
marked historical epochs his will has, on grounds of 
spiritual utility, departed from its accustomed method of 
procedure, and set aside the wonted procession of physi- 
cal antecedents and consequents, all that we need to 
vindicate the perfect naturalness of such miraculous 
events is the dignus vindice nodus, the occasion worthy 
of the Divine intervention ; and such an occasion is 
surely found in the revelation of immortality, the au- 
thentication of the world's Redeemer, the instauration 
of a new era of spiritual life, when all nations lay under 
the shadow of death. 

But can it be maintained that miracles are excep- 
tions to natural laws ? What do we mean by natural 
laws ? Natural is either an absolute or a relative term. 
In the absolute sense, we have seen that whatever 



66 



CHRISTIANITY 



2LIGI0N Oi 



is consistent with the attributes of God is natural, and 
that in this sense miracles are natural. But in the 
phrase natural laws, the term is employed relatively, and 
refers to the generalizing capacity of him who uses it. 
Natural laws to any given person are such portions and 
modes of the Divine administration as he is capable of 
reducing to system. To the savage, the comet and the 
eclipse are beyond the range of natural phenomena. To 
us, the authentic facts connected with mesmerism, clair- 
voyance, and pseudo-spiritualism are beyond nature ; that 
is, we cannot trace the connection between them and 
their proximate causes, — we cannot classify them, we 
cannot comprehend them in our philosophy; but the 
next generation will probably do all this, and then these 
phenomena will be natural. How know we that the 
works of power and love alleged to have been wrought 
by Christ will not, in an age of higher spiritual philoso- 
phy, assume their place in the order of nature, as pre- 
cisely what should have been anticipated a priori in 
connection w T ith a theophany, — as the very works which 
could not but have proceeded from the Divine attributes 
incarnated in a human form, — as bound to the personality 
of Jesus by the same constant laws of cause and effect 
which make our daily deeds and words proceed naturally 
from our limbs, muscles, active powers, and mental hab- 
itudes ? If this were maintained, by parity of reason, 
those who by virtue of special measures of Divine inspira- 
tion or of intimate communion and sympathy with Jesus 
formed a peculiarly endowed class among men, may have 
had, as the natural and necessary results of these pecu- 
liar endowments, powers similar in kind, though inferior 
in degree, to those exercised by him in whom Christian 
faith recognizes the manifest God. Miracles then may 



MIRACLES. 67 

be natural, not only absolutely, as in accordance with the 
Divine attributes, but also relatively, so far as the laws 
and the order of the universe are concerned. 

Miracles are also natural, because through them, and 
through them alone, the Creator stands in certain rela- 
tions to his creatures, in which it is natural that he should 
stand. Prominent among human experiences are temp- 
tations and sorrows ; they belong to the essential condi- 
tions of our existence ; they are evidently a part of the 
Creator's design ; and we should expect also to find as a 
part of his design efficient support against temptation, 
adequate consolation in sorrow. If the temptation be 
natural, the support is equally so. If the sorrow be 
natural, the consolation is equally so. Now these essen- 
tial offices can be supplied by nothing short of an author- 
itative, that is, a miraculously attested revelation. 

We will consider, first, the case of temptation. I will 
suppose a young man, ingenuous and of good intentions, 
who is placed in a position of great moral danger. A 
friend a little older than himself gives him judicious 
advice and warning, which he approves with all his 
heart, and means to follow. But temptations increase 
and multiply, his own feelings become interested on the 
wrong side, and evil counsellors, who have the same 
claim to be heard with his wise and virtuous friend, do 
what they can to turn the balance in accordance with 
their sympathies and habits. And the balance is turned. 
The good advice is overborne and crowded out, because 
it was mere advice, and not endowed with any authority. 
But suppose that same youth under the positive injunc- 
tions of a father, in whose loving discretion he has a 
confidence too firm to be shaken or undermined, —the 
father's authority may save him where the friend's 
advice would be of no avail. 



68 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

Now, if Jesus Christ was merely a profound thinker, 
an able moral teacher, worthy of respect and deference 
for his wisdom and goodness, yet standing in no official 
relation to us, and possessing no right to be believed and 
obeyed, his precepts are good advice, and we shall fol- 
low them till our passions or surrounding examples induce 
us to forsake them ; but they will have no hold upon us, 
no clinching grasp upon our consciences, no rightful 
claim to our sacred heed which we cannot help recog- 
nizing. But his miracles place him in a new and entirely 
different relation to us. They authenticate his absolute 
right to be believed and obeyed. They make his pre- 
cepts the word of God, the commands and prohibitions 
of the Omnipotent, the eternal and immutable law of His 
household ; and thus regarded, they have a tenacious 
hold, a binding force, which temptation cannot relax, or 
evil counsel neutralize. Have not some of you experi- 
enced the power of a " Thus saith the Lord " in these 
fearful crises of your moral being ? Has not the entire 
marvellous history of the Saviour at such seasons given 
to his words the intense emphasis of authority, which 
has sustained you in the right when earthly motives 
were all arrayed in solid phalanx against the right ? 
And have you not then felt that it was natural that He 
who suffered you to encounter the full force of temptation 
should have given you, in this authority which you could 
not set aside or reason away, an adequate support and 
defence ? 

In sorrow there is a similar need. If you look upon 
Jesus merely as having reached higher and seen farther 
than any other thinker of his age, as having anticipated 
even the best thoughts of our own day, in fine, as a 
masterly religious genius, this will seem enough for you 



MIRACLES. 69 

while the shadow of death is remote from your person 
and dwelling. It is at such times very pleasant to think 
and talk about the intimations of immortality in nature 
and in the soul, and to feel that the same organs of 
research and discovery which Jesus had are yours. But 
when your child lies dead in your house ; when a friend 
dear as your own being is wrestling with the death-angel, 
and on the point of yielding up his breath ; when mounds 
in the graveyard are all that remains to you of those 
from whom to part seemed like rending soul and body 
asunder ; when the final summons sounds in your own 
ears, and the voice comes to you, " Put thy house in 
order, for thou shalt die, and not live," — then Jesus, as 
a philosopher of the unseen, as a suggestive thinker, as a 
wonderfully clear and far-seeing mortal, can give you no 
support or consolation. You then want his authority, — 
his right to be believed. You need his works of omnip- 
otent love. You need to behold the bier stopped on its 
way to the grave, the sepulchre yielding up its prey, the 
Crucified walking in renewed life among those who saw 
him die. Then, and not till then, can you feel the 
power of those sublimest words ever uttered on the 
earth, which shall echo from grave to grave till the 
last of the dying shall have put on immortality, — " I 
am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth in 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; and whoso- 
ever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die." 

My object in this Lecture has been to vindicate for mir- 
acles their place in natural religion. I have shown you 
that there is in the human soul a craving and an appe- 
tency for them, as seen in the almost universal tendency 
to believe in them ; that, so far from their being opposed 
to natural laws, they have formed part of the undoubted 



70 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

history of nature, are in accordance with those Divine 
attributes for which nature is but another name, and in a 
wider generalization may be comprehended within the 
circuit of natural laws ; and that they are adapted to the 
temptations and sorrows which are among the essential 
experiences of human nature. So far, then, are they 
from being attended by any antecedent improbability, 
that they are capable of being established by competent 
human testimony, and especially by so strong an array 
of unexceptionable witnesses as attests the Christian 
miracles. 






LECTURE IV. 

RECORDS OF REVELATION. 

In my last two Lectures I have considered the grounds 
of natural religion on which faith in revelation and in 
miracles reposes. A revelation must needs have some 
definite form or mode, and I propose to inquire this 
evening in what form we should antecedently expect a 
Divine revelation to be communicated and transmitted, 
and how far the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures meet 
the demands and fulfil the conditions of natural religion. 

A revelation, in order to be definite, must be verbal. 
Men think only in words. Emotions or impressions may 
be communicated by looks and gestures ; but truth and 
fact shape themselves in words alone, and are transmitted 
only by words. 

A revelation, in order to be made availing to large 
numbers of mankind, must be promulgated and trans- 
mitted either in speech or in writing. The recipient of 
a revelation might promulgate it by speech alone, and 
might leave it to oral tradition. But tradition, we well 
know, is diluted, magnified, distorted in various ways, 
as it passes from mouth to mouth, and from genera- 
tion to generation. In the lapse of time its authenticity 
always lies open to question. Thus, a large part of the 
traditional history of our own country is already myth- 
ical, and there are varying and opposite traditions with 
regard to events and personages even of the last century. 



72 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

A revelation committed to so unsafe a vehicle would lose 
its hold on enlightened faith, and would have for its 
adherents only those whose ignorance made them cred- 
ulous. 

Writing, therefore, is the form in which we should 
expect a Divine revelation to be embodied for permanent 
use. And we should expect authoritative scriptures. I 
use the word authoritative, not inspired; for the former 
word, and not the latter, expresses our actual need. 
The mode in which the writers of an alleged revelation 
were influenced by the Omniscient Mind — whether 
they were divinely moved to write specifically what 
they wrote, or whether, being divinely enlightened, they 
wrote narratives, letters, poems, as occasion prompted, 
and these writings became authoritative because they 
were the works of inspired men — is a question of not 
the least practical importance. But our need of a rev- 
elation implies and includes the need of scriptures that 
cannot mislead us. We might as well be without a rev- 
elation, as to have one on whose record we can place no 
confident reliance ; for how know we that the very por- 
tions of the record to which we cling with the fondest 
yearning may not be a foreign admixture, and no part 
of the original revelation ? If the golden sands of truth 
are blended with equally glittering sands that are of no 
value, and it is left for us to separate the precious from 
the worthless, the Divine from the human, we need 
a revelation to teach us what portion of the record con- 
tains a revelation. 

I know it may be said with truth that all language is 
ambiguous, and especially that, in translating infallible 
scriptures into other than the original tongues, there 
must needs be more or less of vagueness and error. 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 73 

But similar considerations apply equally to writings of 
all kinds. There is often great ambiguity in a statute 
drawn by a skilful hand, and passed after careful deliber- 
ation by a body of legislators. But would there not be 
immeasurably greater ambiguity, were the public left to 
unauthentic rumor, or to unauthorized letter-writers, for 
the transactions of the legislature ? A part of a care- 
fully prepared document is intelligible to every reader ; 
and as for the portions that admit of being differently 
understood by different minds, the range of possible in- 
ter pretations is limited at the outset, and is still further 
diminished, or wholly done away, by the comparison and 
discussion of conflicting views, and of circumstances and 
other writings adapted to throw light on the document in 
question. In like manner the range of mistranslation is 
limited at the very first, and may be constantly decreas- 
ing with orowino; facilities for understanding; the writing 
translated and its original language. Unauthentic and 
mixed records of revelation would give rise to a vast and 
endless amount of error ; for every man would regard 
that portion of the sacred writings as true which squared 
with his notions, flattered his prejudices, served his in- 
terests, or temporized with his frailties ; and while some 
readers of clear mind and pure heart might detect and 
eliminate what was false and worthless, others would 
throw away the truth and retain the alloy of error alone, 
and there would be no common standard by which those 
of either class could verify their conclusions. But in 
authentic and authoritative scriptures there will of ne- 
cessity be some portions of fundamental truth so plainly 
written that none can misunderstand them ; the range of 
diverse interpretations will be limited and measurable ; 
there will be a common standard of judgment in the 
4 



74 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

original writings ; and discussion will constantly tend to 
the elimination of error from the belief, and to growing 
harmony among the believers. 

This statement may be amply verified by the history 
of opinions in Christendom. Among persons calling 
themselves Christians there are three classes. First, 
there are those who profess to receive the Scriptures as 
their sole and infallible rule of faith and practice. Sec- 
ondly, there are those who receive as equally infallible 
with the Scriptures the traditions of their respective 
churches, the decisions of councils, and the dicta of their 
ecclesiastical superiors. Thirdly, there are those who 
regard the Scriptures as good books for the most part, 
but as simply Jewish literature, not infallible, not author- 
itative, and containing many questionable facts and erro- 
neous opinions. Now, with all the diversities of doctrine 
in the first class, there are certain fundamental truths in 
which they all agree, such as the personality and unity 
of God, the divine mission, miraculous birth, sacrificial 
death, resurrection, ascension, and intercession of Christ, 
the divine influence on the soul of man, the necessity 
of regeneration, and the eternal happiness of good men. 
Moreover, it cannot be denied, that among different sec- 
tions of this class there is a constantly growing harmony 
of opinion and feeling, — a harmony which has been 
cherished, more than by any other agency, by the care- 
ful study of the original Scriptures with the perpetually 
increasing apparatus for their interpretation. On the 
other hand, we find in some portions of the second class 
a virtual polytheism, insomuch that the worship of God is 
almost forsaken for that of idols, and so entire a rejection 
of the spiritual element in religion, that salvation is ex- 
pected on the sole condition of the observance of a ritual. 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 75 

Still worse, in the third class, there are those who openly 
deny the existence of a personal God, cast discredit on 
the most important parts of the Gospel history, and re- 
pudiate the belief of a conscious immortality. In fine, if 
you will take the two forms of belief that have the least 
in common, maintained by those w T ho derive their faith 
from the Bible, you will find that they have immeasura- 
bly more in common, than either of them has with the 
Romish formalism and image-worship on the one hand, 
or with pantheism on the other. 

We now inquire, What sort of scriptures should we 
expect as the records of revelation ? I answer, first, 
that revelation would necessarily produce a literature of 
a peculiar kind, and would virtually create its own rec- 
ords. Suppose such a series of revelations as the Chris- 
tian believes to have been made, — a special divine 
movement extending over many ages of human history, 
commencing with the early patriarchs, rolling on in suc- 
cessive waves of light along the line of lawgivers and 
judges, kings, priests, and prophets, and culminating in 
Jesus Christ. Such a movement would necessarily leave 
its indelible traces in the records of human thought and 
experience. It would be in this respect like the great 
movements of the physical universe. The tornado has 
its track, marked by uprooted trees and prostrate ranks 
of growing grain. The shower in the drought of mid- 
summer takes its path, and where it passes there are 
greenness, bloom, and beauty, with parched and blighted 
herbage on either side. Thus would it be with the 
mighty movement of the Divine Spirit over the souls of 
men. Where miracles were witnessed, where super- 
human forms appeared, where voices from heaven were 



76 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

heard, there must have been a corresponding elevation 
of the mind and quickening of the emotional nature. 
Poetry must have taken on a loftier inspiration, a purer 
flow, a profounder depth of meaning. Precepts must 
have dropped from the pen of the wise with a keener 
point and a weightier emphasis. Truth, not surmised or 
reasoned out, but beheld as through lightning-flashes that 
parted the clouds and scattered the darkness about the 
Omniscient Mind, must have been announced with a con- 
fidence and an authority that could be derived from no 
other source. And if a being who bore at once the form 
of man and the image of God dwelt prolongedly on the 
earth, and conversed familiarly with a circle of intimate 
friends, to them, so to speak, the lightning-flash must 
have been continuous. The clouds must have remained 
parted, the curtain of darkness must have been uplifted, 
while they were with him. They must have been liter- 
ally bathed in light. Truths ordinarily unseen must 
have been so long and so vividly visible to them as to 
leave indelible images on the mental retina, so that we 
should have from them self-verifying representations of 
nature and providence, duty and destiny, in writings 
which would hardly need any other attestation than the 
keen and deep insight they displayed. Thus would rev- 
elation of necessity make and leave its own record, and 
subsequent generations could gather up its literary me- 
morials, all marked by infallible tokens of the divine 
movement in which they had their birth. 

But it may be asked, Is it conceivable that revelation 
should have been left to the incidental literature that 
would necessarily grow from it, without some more or- 
derly and systematic record ? Can we imagine a truly 
divine element in writings so miscellaneous and frag- 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 77 

mentary as the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures ? If 
God had a message or a series of messages for mankind, 
would he have scattered his teachings, counsels, and 
promises, morsel by morsel, among genealogies, narra- 
tives of wars and revolutions, stories of human folly and 
guilt, dreary wastes of prosaic detail ? Should we not 
have expected from the wisdom of a self-revealing God 
what men have often been wise enough to write, — a 
body of divinity, a compend of sacred truth, methodized 
under appropriate titles, so that we should have in 
one part of the record an outline of dogmatic theology, 
in another an ethical code, in another an exposition of 
human nature and destiny, in another a digest of the 
religious history of the race ? The Scriptures might 
then be studied like a school-hook, and even the child 
might be thoroughly furnished with an accurate knowl- 
edge of divine things, to which nothing more need 
afterward be added. I answer, that if a council of wise 
and good men had been commissioned to make a Bible 
with a divine revelation for its basis, they would un- 
doubtedly have made a systematic treatise such as I 
have described. But of what use would it have been ? 
Dry, homiletic, full of technical phraseology, it would 
have had only a very limited and slow circulation, and 
that confined to persons of already thoughtful minds and 
scholarly habits. It would have had for its readers a no 
larger public than Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, or at 
most than Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, or Baxter's 
Saints' Rest. Bible societies would have had their issues 
returned upon their hands. 

Scriptures thus written would also have narrowed and 
belittled religious truth, — would have curtailed the In- 
finite not only to the dimensions of a finite mind, but to 



78 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

proportions which that mind would outgrow ; for the intel- 
lect that comprehended all the religious truth presented 
to it in its early years would exceed it, overlap it, look 
down upon it, in the pride of its strength. All positive 
systems are thus outgrown. They are of use in depart- 
ments of knowledge with which we are only remotely 
concerned, or want but a slender modicum of informa- 
tion. They are, too, of use to really scientific men in 
their novitiate, but no longer. No man becomes a pro- 
ficient in any science, who does not transcend system, 
and gather up new truth for himself in the boundless 
field of research. In religion there are creeds and cate- 
chisms, man-made bibles, good in their way, which pro- 
fess to teach the whole of religion. But no sooner does 
a man place one of these between his own soul and the 
fragmentary, miscellaneous Bible of which it purports to 
be the summary, than he dwindles into a theological 
pygmy, has all his powers of apprehension and reflection 
crippled and dwarfed, and thenceforth moves, not even 
in a self-returning circle, but in a constantly diminishing 
spiral. 

One chief mark of genuineness, of accordance with 
nature, with what we should anticipate from the Divine 
counsels, in the Bible that we have, is its adaptation to a 
lifelong study, — its expanding breadth, and growing 
depth, and culminating loftiness of meaning, with the 
enlargement of its student's own powers, — its constantly 
increasing hold upon the interest, so that none read it 
with so much freshness of experience and vividness of 
curiosity as those who are most familiar with it. Study 
these Scriptures as long and as thoroughly as we may, 
we never exhaust their riches, or fail to unearth new 
wealth of significance. And we always find more than 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 79 

we seek. When we dig for brass, we get gold ; when 
for gold, rubies and diamonds blaze upon our sight. St. 
Paul alone might give us work for a lifetime ; in his 
Epistles the strata of spiritual wisdom grow more and 
more precious, the deeper we mine them ; and one might 
be daily conversant with them for half a century, and 
then leave the world with few wishes so dear to his heart 
as that of renewing in heaven with that glorious leader 
of the Church militant and triumphant the themes in 
which he had inspired and guided the meditations of the 
earthly pilgrimage. 

Again, we should expect in the records of revelation 
a wide diversity of form, style, and method, in order to 
attract widely various classes of minds. As I have said, 
a didactic compend would have been rejected by the 
mass of readers. The natural method of diffusing the 
seedling principles of religious truth might be suggested 
by what annually takes place in the diffusion of the 
germs of vegetable life. The seeds that spring up in 
verdure and beauty by the wayside, on the mountain, in 
the forest, sown by no mortal hand, have their seed-time 
provided for, their propagation in new localities insured, 
their harvests guaranteed, by being connected with some 
one or more of the ever-moving forces of nature. Some 
are wafted to their beds on downy wings by autumnal 
winds. Some are borne on the fleeces of migratory an- 
imals, to vary the panorama in scenes where their kind 
had never before found lodgement. Some are floated 
on rills of melting snow, or on rain-swollen brooks and 
torrents, and sown in the genial soil prepared for them by 
the subsiding waters. Thus would it naturally be with 
the seeds of religious truth. In mass they would have 
no power of v self-diffusion or self-transmission. But look 



80 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

at our Bible, and see how admirably it answers this con- 
dition. In this marvellous series of books the seed of the 
immortal harvest, whose germination is to renew the 
soul and transform the character, is attached to all that 
can attract and interest man in his neediness and sin- 
fulness, in his yearnings and aspirations. Here it is 
imbedded in the winning portraiture of some venerable 
saint, or in the startling experiences of some God-defying 
sinner ; there, in the wonderful vicissitudes of a nation's 
fortunes, rising or sinking, illustrious or disastrous, in the 
ratio of its loyalty or its profligacy. Again it is borne 
on the sweet current of holy song. Then it forms the 
freight of the whole touching narrative of the Saviour's 
life, from the hour when angels herald his birth till they 
watch with the apostles his ascension on high, when the 
everlasting gates are opened that the King of glory may 
come in. Then it is conveyed in the close and pun- 
gent logic of Paul, in the terse, sententious ethical 
discourse of James, in the tender breathings and the 
ecstatic visions of the loving John. There is that in the 
Bible which may arrest the attention and win the regard 
of human beings of every age, condition, and culture, 
— which may fix the child's delighted interest, and at 
the same time kindle the imagination of a Milton or a 
Klopstock, initiate a Newton, a Locke, a Boyle, into a 
profounder philosophy than that of matter or of mind, 
engross and crown the life-toil of a Lardner, a Paley, 
a Neander. Thus in every form in which men's minds 
and hearts can be reached do these records convey the 
incorruptible seed to its genial bed in the soul, attesting 
the divine element in them, more than by all things 
else, by their fitness for human nature, by their close 
human adaptations, relations, and sympathies. 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 81 

The miseellaneousness of our Scriptures is natural, 
also, because we trace in them in this very particular 
God's wonted method of teaching, the stretching forth 
of the line that goes out to all the earth, the likeness of 
the unwritten word that reaches to the ends of the world. 
Not with square and compasses of man's device has God 
built the earth, and meted out the heavens. His crea- 
tion is miscellaneous, broken at every point, — here a 
sheltered valley, there a profound abyss, on one side a 
mountain with its summit in the clouds, on the other 
a leaping cataract, while off in the distance the waves 
lift up their voice, and in the depths above the stars move 
each on its separate path, and shine each with a differing 
glory. When I look into the Bible, I behold there the 
same sublime diversity, — on one leaf, as it were pastures 
clothed with flocks, and valleys covered over with corn, 
where all that grows is ripe for use, and the most igno- 
rant wayfarer cannot reach out his hand in vain ; and on 
the next leaf, heights and depths in which are the hidings 
of His power, and which it may tax the loftiest faculties 
of successive generations to scale and fathom. I follow 
the Saviour into quiet home-scenes, where kind and fa- 
miliar words flow as from the lips of any holy son of man, 
and then go up with him on the mountain where the 
brightness of heaven glows in his face and gleams from 
his raiment, and then look on the dread mystery of Geth- 
semane, the bloody sweat, the agony, the angel that 
came to strengthen him ; and for this blending, alternat- 
ing, mutual interpenetrating of the genially human and 
the ineffably Divine, I trace only the more readily the 
image of the God whom in part we see and know, as we 
do the countenance of a brother, yet about whose throne 
rest clouds and darkness. I mark in the Bible the Divine 

4 * F 



82 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

Providence in the even current of human affairs unruffled 
by marvel as in any common history or biography, — 
then replenishing the widow's wasting oil-cruse, — then 
spreading darkness over a whole land, rending its rocks, 
unsealing its sepulchres ; and for this combination of the 
unemphatic, the quiet, the grand, and the terrible, I 
seem to read only the more natural and lifelike record 
of Him who smiles upon us in the wayside flower, and 
then moves in storm, earthquake, and tempest, lashes the 
writhing waves, rides on the wings of the whirlwind, 
terrifies the nations. And what though in this mis- 
cellany there be much which on a superficial reading we 
cannot understand, — much that transcends our use, — 
much, too, that is beneath the standard of our age and 
culture ? The Bible purports to be the record of the 
means employed for the spiritual education of men from 
the birth of Adam to the end of time, and for their 
education for an inconceivably lofty and expanded sphere 
of being. In this record there w^ould naturally be some 
things which had their use and wrought their work 
long ago, having been adapted to the culture of genera- 
tions whose condition and habits we know too imper- 
fectly to perceive the divine adaptation to their needs 
wdiich may have existed, — many things which may 
develop their full meaning only to generations of higher 
intelligence and truer faith than ours, — many things, 
also, which, pondered and inwardly digested, will reveal 
new and growing depths of meaning to our own hearts, 
— many things, it may be, which, received into our 
minds, yet not fully germinating here, may spring up, 
and blossom, and bear fruit in heaven. 

If, on the grounds which I have now urged, it be 
granted that a revelation was likely to be committed to 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 88 

writing, not in a set treatise or in a strictly didactic form , 
but in such a diversity of methods as to meet the endless 
variety of human tastes and wants, we next ask, What 
relation would such records naturally sustain to the man- 
ners, opinions, culture, and literature of their times ? 
Would they, in everything except the divine truth they 
contained, have borne marks of their human authorship, 
birth-land, and birth-time, of imperfect knowledge, nar- 
row philosophical conceptions, national habits of thought, 
popular imagery, provincial idioms ? Or would they 
have been conformed to some high ideal standard, so 
that they should transcend all other literature of their 
times in purity of style, accuracy of opinion, precision 
of historical and statistical detail, freedom from local and 
national characteristics, — thus belonging peculiarly to 
no one century or people, but bearing an equal relation 
to all lands and all ages ? Let us test the latter alter- 
native. 

We will suppose at the outset ideally perfect scrip- 
tures, such as we might imagine to have resulted from 
the verbal dictation of the Divine Spirit. But is this a 
conceivable hypothesis ? If we admit for sacred scrip- 
tures a divine authorship in the sense in which we un- 
derstand human authorship, is there any style or method 
of which human language is susceptible which would 
not fall below even our least adequate conceptions of the 
mind of God ? Or if there were, would it not transcend 
the comprehension as far as it would exceed the ability 
of ordinary mortals ? In order to be understood, would 
it not be necessary for the Divine Author to fall below 
the ideally perfect, — to descend to the common arena 
of authorship, and simply to indite more finished history, 
more eloquent didactic prose, loftier poetry, than could be 



84 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

found in any other writings of the time, but subject to 
the same standards of criticism by which they are tried, 
liable to the same limitations from the poverty of diction, 
and sure, in the progress of knowledge, the development 
of language, and the enlargement of the scope of thought, 
to bear a less favorable comparison with subsequent than 
with contemporary literature ? Now this literary com- 
petition with man, if you will suffer the phrase, is re- 
volting to every sentiment of reverence. But this is 
not by any means the only argument against the theory 
which would exempt sacred scriptures from the liabilities 
and imperfections of human authorship. Let us follow it 
further. 

The records of revelation, in order to be transmitted to 
coming ages, must have their hold and do their work on 
the men of their own time. Suppose the age when 
these records are reduced to writing to be a grossly 
material age, and one which has only somewhat coarse 
material imagery for the expression of spiritual truth, the 
scriptures constructed on this theory must reject all such 
imagery, and play endless changes on the few, vague, 
and seldom employed abstract words and phrases which 
the language may afford. The classical Greek might 
have furnished a very few such words ; I am not certain 
that there is one in the earlier Hebrew ; the Rabbinical 
dialect has two or three. But such as they were, they 
must have been employed, and ordinary readers would 
have been repelled or hopelessly perplexed. Then, again, 
in geography, astronomy, natural philosophy, therapeu- 
tics, such scriptures must recognize no prevailing error, — 
no, not though it were one that had wrought itself into 
the current belief and speech of all men. Instead of 
speaking of sunrise and sunset, they must expound the 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 85 

laws of planetary motion. Instead of using for the sky 
the designation of firmament (which denotes a solid 
sphere of crystal, supposed to be at the farthest a few 
miles above the earth's surface), they must employ 
phrases that imply the vastness of celestial spaces. In- 
stead of referring to the ends of the earth, they must 
explain its rotundity. Instead of calling insane persons 
Lunatics, they must enter a special disclaimer against the 
influence of the moon in cerebral disease. Nay, more, 
we, in our enlightened century, have doubtless a great 
deal yet to learn, errors in our philosophy to correct, 
wider generalizations to make ; and scriptures conformed 
to the absolute truth of nature and science must be on 
a level with the scientific world many centuries hence. 
Now books thus written would have been in part unintel- 
ligible to the men of their own times, and, so far as they 
were understood, w^ould have run so entirely counter to 
their received opinions on extra-religious subjects, as to 
awaken incredulity as to their religious contents. Scien- 
tific truth can be legitimately reached only step- wise, 
often with age-long preparation for a new step in ad- 
vance, often with a long interval between the announce- 
ment and the popular reception of a new fact, theory, or 
law. Scientifically accurate scriptures would have had 
laid upon them the impossible task of anticipating this 
progress, of revolutionizing men's notions about the uni- 
verse before they knew the reasons for changing them ; 
and failing of this, they would necessarily have failed of 
a hospitable reception for their religious contents. We 
should therefore have expected that scriptures written 
under the guidance of a more than human wisdom, and 
freighted by the providence of God with truth for the 
illumination and redemption of mankind, would have 



86 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

wasted none of their power in teaching geography, as- 
tronomy, or philosophy, but would have employed on all 
these subjects the current speech and method of their 
times, would have used the popular phraseology, though 
founded on ignorance, and would have concentrated all 
their force of representation on the great themes as to 
which alone they were destined to be the light of the 
world. 

Still further, sacred scriptures needed to take with 
their contents proofs of their genuineness from their own 
down to future and far distant ages. It concerns us 
above all things to know whether our Scriptures were 
written at the times when they severally purport to have 
been written. But where would be the evidence of this, 
if they were conformed to the standard of knowledge and 
science existing in the nineteenth century or destined to 
exist in the twenty-ninth, — if in their divine perfect- 
ness of finish they were swept clear of all traces of the 
ruder and more ignorant ages from which we believe 
them to have been transmitted ? Foremost among the 
proofs of their genuineness are these very birthmarks 
which they indelibly bear ; — in the Old • Testament 
numerous traces of an unhistorical method of narration, 
of infantile conceptions as to the extent and relations of 
the universe, and of such scientific notions as men had 
before the birth of science ; in the New Testament, 
a Hellenistic Greek which has little in common with 
Attic terseness and purity, bristling all over with Hebrew 
idioms, with not a few untranslated Syro-Chaldaic words, 
— in fine, a dialect which a century after the destruction 
of Jerusalem could not have been written by any man 
living. Bishop Colenso's book on the Pentateuch and 
Joshua needs only an altered animus on the writer's 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 87 

part to become a plea for their genuineness. The argu- 
ment turns solely on certain alleged inaccuracies and 
inconsistencies in genealogies, numerals, and statistics, — 
on the very features which characterize all early attempts 
at history, and which belong emphatically to Herodotus, 
though he was a much-travelled, all-inquiring, pains- 
taking seeker after historical truth. 1 Had these Hebrew 
writers drawn up their genealogies as if they were copy- 

1 When this Lecture was written, only the First Part of Bishop Colenso's 
work had appeared. The author has not yet seen the Third Part. The argu- 
ment of the Second Part rests wholly on the literal construction of the Hebrew 
verb l^V (know), in Exodus vi. 3: "I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, 
and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah 
was I not known to them." The name Jehovah does, nevertheless, occur in 
the biographies of those very patriarchs. Yet that it was not in common 
use until Samuel's time and afterward would appear from its being seldom 
used before that period in the composition of proper names, while El was 
often so used, and also from the fact that, in a portion of the Psalms ascribed 
to David, some of which bear marks of being — while others, by Colenso's 
usual circular method of reasoning are assumed to be — the earliest, the title 
Elohim prevails, while Jehovah occurs in those purporting or assumed to be 
the latest. Now the Pentateuch must have been written after the name 
Jehovah had come into current use as the national designation of the God of 
the Hebrews. Therefore it could not have been written by Moses, or by any 
person earlier than Samuel, who probably wrote a considerable portion of it. 

So far as this argument is valid, it bears not against the Mosaic authorship, 
but against any intelligent and honest authorship" or editorship of the Penta- 
teuch. Certainly the discrepancy on which it is founded is too obvious and 
too utterly irreconcilable to have escaped the notice of the man or men who 
first made of the five books one book, or of the people generally when they 
began to regard the Pentateuch as consecutive history. The author of Exo- 
dus would have stultified himself by making the statement attributed to him 
by Colenso, seeing that he must necessarily have been conversant either with 
Genesis in its finished form, or with the records from which it was compiled, 
in which the name Jehovah is so often and familiarly employed. The obvious 
laws of interpretation, the genius of the Hebrew tongue, the latitude of use 
which we find attached to the Hebrew verb on which the question turns, and 
the somewhat flexible signification which the corresponding verb has in every 
language, authorize us to regard the passage under discussion as denoting 
simply that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not employ Jehovah as their 
accustomed and formal designation of the Almighty, — an exposition which 
harmonizes perfectly with the notices of their history in Genesis. 



88 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

ing from accurately collated family records ; had they 
dealt with numerals as skilful arithmeticians ; had their 
narration been precise and methodical, like the carefully 
compiled annals of one of our New England towns, — 
he would be a bold man who would claim for their books 
the venerable antiquity from which they purport to have 
come down to us. The very characteristics of these books 
which have given ground for ignorant cavil show most 
conclusively that they belong to the early infancy of 
written language, — to an age when historical research, 
the comparative criticism of documents and traditions,- 
and artistical authorship, had not begun to be. 

Yet, while as regards all subjects except religion we 
should expect the authentic records of revelation to be 
conformed to the current opinions, the ignorances, and 
the errors of their times and authors, we should, on the 
other hand, expect to see the frequent outcropping of the 
Divine element in strong contrast with the human sur- 
roundings, position, and culture of those same authors^ 
On the one hand, we should look in such scriptures for 
characteristics which mark the age and people whence 
they sprang ; on the other hand, for characteristics which 
unmistakably mark the specially Divine origin of their 
religious contents. Or, to vary the form of statement, 
we should anticipate at once such scriptures as none 
but their reputed authors could have written, and such 
scriptures as neither they nor any other men could have 
written except through the direct or transmitted inspira- 
tion of God. Now, in examining our sacred books, we 
find precisely the contrast between the biographies of the 
writers and the religious contents of the writings which 
we should expect to find in authentic records of revela- 
tion. Take the case of Moses, who, if not the compiler 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 89 

of the Pentateuch, must have been the virtual author of 
a very large portion of it. We see him the nursling of a 
corrupt court, the quick and reckless avenger, even to 
blood, of an insult offered to a brother-Hebrew, a hunted 
fugitive from justice, for many years an under-shepherd 
in a tribe of idolatrous nomads, and during his subse- 
quent official life hasty, irascible, and querulous. Whence, 
then, that theology in its sublime personal monotheism 
standing out alone -from all antiquity, — that code of 
social morals so rigidly just, so touchingly humane, — 
that Decalogue embodying more of practical ethics and 
religion than the rest of mankind had conceived of till 
Christ came, and needing from him to make it perfect 
only the light of his example and the sanction of his 
revealed immortality ? David was a rude and barbarous 
chieftain ; his throne was disgraced, his gray hairs dis- 
honored, by the foulest licentiousness, and by deeds of 
atrocious violence and malignity which even the savage 
manners of his age cannot palliate. Whence then those 
strains of lyric devotion, which more than fill the purest 
aspirations of the most saintly among the children of 
men, and which awaken no sense of irrelevancy when 
we think of them as the vehicle of praise and prayer 
for the Sinless and Heaven-Born on the eve of his cru- 
cifixion ? The writers of the New Testament appear in 
its historical portions very far from faultless, — Peter 
by turns the braggart and the renegade, capable of the 
meanest falsehood when every manly attribute cried 
shame upon him, — John filled with paltry jealousy, 
and fiercely bitter in his resentment, — Paul the trucu- 
lent and unrelenting persecutor, even of helpless women. 
Yet in their writings what depth of spiritual insight, 
what ripeness of ethical wisdom, what severity of dis- 



90 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

crimination, what a pure and lofty standard of conduct 
and character ! We cannot get rid of the divine ele- 
ment. Infidels are fond of dwelling on the follies and 
crimes of these writers. They barb the keenest shafts 
of Paine's scurrility. They are a constantly recurring 
theme in Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. They 
often reappear in the naturalistic writings of our own 
day. We rejoice to have them set forth in the fullest 
prominence ; for the greater the stress laid upon them, 
the more utterly impossible is it to deny that the power 
of the Highest overshadowed these men, and that they 
wrote as they were moved by the spirit of God. 

I pass to another point. While we should expect in 
the records of revelation the current style of their birth- 
age and birth-land, with all its limitations, imperfections, 
impurities, provincialisms, and that style still further 
affected by whatever in each individual writer was un- 
favorable to finished authorship, we should also expect to 
find frequent marks of the Divine impulse and influence 
in the expression no less than in the thought. All strong 
movements upon the mind betray themselves in pecu- 
liarly condensed and vivid forms of utterance. Now, 
our sacred books bear, in instances too numerous to be 
specified, this mark of their alleged character. They 
abound in passages in which a single phrase or word is 
charged with a richness of meaning and an intensity of 
force, indicating the mightiest of all influences on the 
consciousness of the writer. What elsewhere would fill 
a tedious treatise, is here globed in a sentence or a frag- 
ment of a sentence. A metaphor, an allegory, a parable, 
of a dozen lines, comprehends the pith and power of a 
volume of didactic wisdom. The story of the prodigal 
son contains more soul than we can find in a whole folio 



RECORDS OF REVELATION. 91 

body of divinity. The Twenty-Third Psalm tells more 
of the Divine Providence than a disquisition which it 
would take years to write and weeks to read. There 
are isolated sayings of the Bible that have formed the 
life-long nourishment of Christians, and given them their 
sufficing viaticum for their last journey. I remember an 
instance in which a man of fine powers and large culture 
said on his recovery from an attack of illness which kept 
him for many w^eeks in daily expectation of death, that 
his life for those weeks (and it was a perfectly happy 
life) was but a prolonged rumination on a brief text of 
Scripture, into which his whole consciousness seemed to 
project itself, — in which his soul was clothed as in 
an impregnable panoply against fear, doubt, and suffer- 
ing. With other good books we gladly become familiar ; 
their brilliant sayings fix themselves in the memory; 
their rhythm glides softly and sweetly through the inward 
ear ; but it is not to these that we resort in the stress of 
need, — it is not these that we rehearse at the death-bed 
or in the house of mourning. It is in the very words of 
prophet and psalmist, apostle and Saviour, that men 
fortify themselves in trial, in bereavement, under the 
death-shadow. 

It does not accord with my purpose, nor does it fall 
within the limits assigned to my course, to exhibit the 
positive proof — to my own mind irresistible — that the 
Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are the authentic and 
trustworthy records of Divine revelation. They in fact 
rest on a stronger basis of evidence than we have in 
behalf of the genuineness of the undoubted works of the 
best writers of Greece and Rome ; and their genuine- 
ness is impugned on grounds on which, if admitted, we 
should be compelled to reject all our established beliefs 



92 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

with regard to the literature of antiquity. My aim has 
been to show you, first, what sort of sacred writings the 
religion of nature might authorize us to expect, and, sec- 
ondly, how perfectly our sacred writings fulfil the condi- 
tions which we should establish on grounds of a 'priori 
probability. I rejoice to have performed such an office 
for these writings, — not that they need my advocacy, 
but that they claim every expression that I can give of 
my grateful trust and reverence. 



LECTURE V, 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 



In the Lectures I have already given I have shown 
the accordance of revelation, miracles, and authentic 
scriptures, with what the religion of nature might lead 
us to anticipate. The contents of a divine revelation, 
however, must be in great part such as could not 
have been anticipated on natural grounds ; for it is the 
depth of man's native ignorance, and his destitution of 
adequate sources of religious knowledge, that constitute 
the need and create the antecedent probability of a rev- 
elation. Yet there is one important distinction to which 
I solicit your emphatic heed. The discovery and the 
verification of truth are two entirely different processes ; 
and the faculties which are inadequate for the former 
process may be amply sufficient for the latter. Thus 
the Copernican system could not have been discovered 
earlier than it was discovered ; for it was not the happy 
conjecture of the one man whose name it bears, but it 
marked the stage of progress which astronomical science 
had attained in his day : yet, had it been announced a 
thousand years earlier, there was science enough in 
India, at Alexandria, and among the Arabs, to verify it. 
The rules of navigation are the progressive discovery of 
many centuries, and oiot one navigator in a thousand 
understands the principles on which they are based ; yet 
three months' study and a couple of voyages will enable 



94 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

one to verify them. The laws of projectiles have been 
discovered only by the profoundest processes of mathe- 
matical analysis, and are expressed in formulas which 
only the trained mathematician can read ; every gunner 
in the army and navy can verify them. 

In the realm of religious truth man may verify what 
he could not discover. Thus, though he might not 
attain by his own intuition or reasoning to just views 
of the Divine nature and administration, he may know 
whether the views presented harmonize with his own 
observation and experience. Though he might not con- 
struct for himself a perfect code of ethics, he may, by 
putting such precepts of duty as are given to him to the 
test of practice, ascertain whether obedience to them 
tends to his usefulness, happiness, and highest good. 
Though he might not without revelation feel sure of 
immortality, still less of any detailed characteristics of 
the blessed life, he may test wdiat is revealed to him 
concerning the future destiny of man by its adaptation 
to his nature, his desires, and his aspirations. Conscious- 
ness and experience, therefore, though they could never 
supply the place of revelation, may furnish the strongest 
possible evidence of the genuineness of a revelation. In 
point of fact, while Christians who are both intelligent and 
devout find in the historical evidences of their religion 
ample materials for the refutation of unbelief, their faith 
rests more on their own consciousness than on outward 
testimony. Testimony assures them that their religion 
is true ; consciousness, that it cannot but be true. In- 
deed, we should antecedently expect to be able to verify 
the truths of revelation, some of them fully, others ap- 
proximately ; for if He who created the soul of man and 
administers the government of the universe makes a rev- 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 95 

elation, its contents must of necessity be in harmony with 
the souls that he has created and the government that 
he administers. And these contents, so far as they are 
thus verified, are natural religion ; for they are capable 
of being verified only because they are in accordance 
with the nature of the universe and of man. 

I will ask you, in the remainder of this course, to 
verify with me some of the contents of the Christian 
revelation. I would speak first of the character of 
God, as it appears under the light of nature to the eyes 
which revelation has unsealed. The prominent features 
of the Christian idea of God — peculiar features, I would 
contend, for, though they have entered into the belief of 
modern deists, we do not find them before Christ, except 
in those earlier revelations which were foreshinings of 
Christianity — are, first, the perfect love of God, includ- 
ing his paternal relation to man and his all-embracing 
providence, and, secondly, his holiness or supreme refer- 
ence to moral distinctions. The first of these, God's 
perfect love, will occupy our attention in the present 
Lecture. 

We remark at the outset, that among the ends or final 
causes which we have been able to discover in nature, 
there are none which are otherwise than beneficent. 
There is no one contrivance for the production of evil, — 
no nerve that was made to ache, no sense adapted to 
deceive, no process whose natural working creates mis- 
ery, no faculty the normal exercise of which interferes 
with happiness, no portion of the system or course of 
nature which is intrinsically and necessarily malign in its 
influence, no cause of annoyance or injury which man may 
not, in the ordinary exercise of his powers, either remove, 



96 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

avoid, subdue, or utilize. Now, in a universe full of the 
tokens of design, this state of things could not exist, 
were not the Creator positively benevolent. Were he 
malevolent, the malign purpose would be patent and 
palpable. Were he simply indifferent to the happiness 
of his creatures, that indifference would manifest itself in 
the choice of the most direct means to the attainment 
of ultimate ends, without any reference to the tendency 
of those means to produce happiness or misery. For 
instance, death must be an ultimate, and is certainly a 
desirable end, in a world of limited capacity, in which 
each species is endowed with the power of self-multipli- 
cation ; and indifference to happiness on the part of the 
Creator could hardly have failed to manifest itself in the 
preference of directness and efficiency to mercy in the 
choice of death-producing agencies, in which, on the 
other hand, a careful analysis reveals the minimum of 
suffering consistent with the end to be attained. So is it 
with the entire range of natural agencies for the attain- 
ment of ultimate ends. We can trace in no one of them 
the will, or (if I may use a word more strictly applicable 
to man) the willingness to produce suffering. There is 
no apparatus in nature which has an immediate or neces- 
sary tendency to inflict pain or misery. 

On the other hand, enjoyment or happiness is the ex- 
press and undoubted end of unnumbered portions of the 
universe and its administration. In the senses, the affec- 
tions, and the intellect, man has many endowments, and 
performs many functions in no wise essential to the pres- 
ervation or transmission of life, or to his mental or moral 
culture, and which have no possible use or office other 
than the production of happiness. Indeed, there is not a 
physical, mental, or moral power whose normal exercise 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 97 

is not a source of positive pleasure ; and this could not be 
the case without a supremely benevolent design on the 
part of the Deity. The external world, too, is full of 
sights, sounds, flavors, and perfumes, which can have no 
end other than animal and human enjoyment. Contriv- 
ances for this sole purpose crowd upon our observation as 
we extend it to the lower races of animals. The myriads 
of organized beings that float on the summer breeze, 
swarm in the waters, and make the forest glad, — the 
numberless forms of microscopic existence that fill the 
veiy chinks and crannies of creation with sentient and 
rejoicing life, — all demonstrate the benignity of the 
Supreme Being. 

The progress of knowledge and of science has been 
fruitful, more than in anything else, in the discovery of 
beneficent uses, often of obviously beneficent design, in 
departments of nature that had been regarded as detri- 
mental to human happiness, — in fine, in the transfer of 
supposed evils to the catalogue of goods. I might almost 
say that physical science has done nothing else than this. 
It has hardly made a discovery which has not been a 
new revelation of the Divine benevolence, worthy to be 
hailed with a rapturous Te Deum. Thus a large propor- 
tion of the most effective remedies and prophylactics at 
the command of the physician are drawn from the list of 
poisons. The gases, which unmixed are fatal to life, in 
their natural combinations are salutary, in their chemical 
offices inestimably precious. The very fire-damp which 
destroys the careless miner lights our cities. The electric 
force, in its cumulative power fearful and fatal, is the 
vital force of creation ; and the lightning, which leaves 
its occasional memento in the scathed tree, the shattered 
dwelling, or the lifeless human form, dispels miasma, 
5 l G 



98 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

stimulates growth, and sends a quicker, healthier life- 
pulse on the track of the thunder-cloud. The volcano 
is but the safety-valve of subterranean fires, which bear 
an essential part in the economy of nature. Celestial 
phenomena once of dire portent are now recognized as 
staccato passages in the harmony of the spheres. All 
natural objects, events, and processes are in the course 
of verification as good in their place and beautiful in 
their season ; and science is fast encircling the earth 
and spanning the heavens with the apostolic inscription, 
" God is Love." 

In further illustration of the Divine goodness, I would 
solicit your attention to the natural theology of pain. In 
the brute creation there is, we believe, the minimum of 
pain consistent with the law of death and the succession 
of generations. Animals in a state of nature suffer little 
from disease, probably still less from fear. The provision 
by which they prey upon one another, considered in all 
its bearings, is beautifully beneficent. Were they left to 
perish by the natural decay of their physical organiza- 
tion, it could be only with protracted suffering, as that 
very decay would prevent them from seeking the wont- 
ed means of subsistence. But the condition, whether of 
age or of accidental disablement, which prevents their 
supplying their own needs, renders them with merciful 
promptness a prey to their natural enemies. Moreover, 
so far as we know, except where domestication and full 
feeding make an animal indifferent to the uses of his 
victim, death by beasts of prey is almost instantaneous, 
and the life which up to that moment had known neither 
care, apprehension, nor suffering, goes to reinforce an- 
other equally painless life. 

But man is liable to intense and prolonged suffering, 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 99 

and we can fully vindicate the Divine love in man's con- 
dition upon the earth only by recognizing the moral 
benefit which results from the various forms of painful 
endurance. This, however, hardly needs a labored dem- 
onstration ; for none are so ready to admit the benig- 
nant efficacy of suffering as those who have been them- 
selves the greatest sufferers, and among those who bear 
all the marks of the highest spiritual culture, and at the 
same time of the fullest measure of conscious happiness, 
there are multitudes to .whom we can point, not in pity, 
but in admiration, and anticipate the announcement which 
the Apostle heard in his vision of heaven, "These are 
they that have come out of great tribulation." 

Considered with reference to its moral and spiritual 
ends, pain has its merciful limitations. Up to a certain 
point it may be borne with cheerful submission and with 
conscious benefit to the moral nature. When it tran- 
scends this point, one of three things takes place. Either 
death ensues ; or some paralytic or gangrenous affection 
intervenes, which separates the suffering organ or mem- 
ber from the rest of the body, and forbids the nerves to 
transmit their report to the brain and the consciousness ; 
or, if neither of these, delirium makes the soul imperfectly 
conscious of what the body endures, or even wraps it 
in a wild elysium. I hardly need remind you in what 
aiv overwhelming majority of instances either of these 
alternatives may be anticipated and prevented by ano- 
dynes and ansesthetic agents. 

There is also a limit of age. The intenser forms of 
physical suffering belong for the most part to the period 
of active moral discipline, when pain may yield its full 
revenue of spiritual benefit. The sufferings of infant 
children are doubtless much less severe than they seem. 



100 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

The infant brain is but imperfectly developed in its 
susceptibility of impression, no less than in its active 
power ; in many forms of disease it is so far affected 
directly or by sympathy as to diminish greatly the 
amount of conscious pain that would otherwise be ex- 
perienced ; and we all know how the capacity of enjoy- 
ment, and even of absolute mirthfulness, will betray itself 
in children amidst paroxysms that threaten instant dis- 
solution, and when already under the shadow of death. 
Thus the morbid liabilities of very young children serve 
the purpose of sustaining parental vigilance and multi- 
plying those tender offices by which the ties of blood and 
birth are made doubly strong and dear, while compara- 
tively little is abstracted from the joyousness of the 
irresponsible years of opening life. In old age we may 
mark a similar limitation. There is a period of decline, 
when, though the character still grows from its own 
resources, active moral discipline ceases, and the aged 
person seems to be merely awaiting the summons to 
a sphere of duty in which the worn-out body will be no 
longer needed. This period is seldom liable to acute 
disease or intense suffering. The nerves and the brain 
have lost much of their sensitiveness. There is often 
languor or weariness, but seldom continuous or severe 
bodily anguish. The gentle steps by which one is led 
through declining years are almost always the subject of 
grateful observation, except where vice has thwarted the 
kindly purpose of nature, and planted thorns of its own 
in the pillow of the hoary head. 

Apart from its moral uses, pain serves important phys- 
ical purposes. It is the sentinel against bodily injury. 
It is the guardian of temperance, purity, and hygienic 
regimen. It is the prime executive as to those natural 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 101 

laws which we are bound to obey, and which ought not 
to be violated with impunity. And in this office of pain, 
also, we may trace limitations that indicate the Divine 
goodness. Thus the pain of hunger recurs in its mildest 
form just often enough to induce the regular supply 
of our wants that is essential to health and vigor. It 
reaches its acme of agony at the very point at which the 
supply can no longer be delayed without serious injury 
and peril. If the supply be of necessity postponed, the 
pain, having served its purpose of warning, dies away, 
and lethargy ensues. The same is true of suffering from 
extreme cold. Intense pain warns the exposed person 
to seek shelter, with a call loud enough and long enough 
in most cases to effect its object without detriment to life 
or limb. But when the injury has taken place, when the 
limb is frozen, the sentinel, no longer needed, quits his 
post, unconsciousness of suffering ensues, and even sen- 
sations of ease and comfort may precede the fatal issue 
of the exposure. To the same category belongs the well- 
known fact, that the nerves susceptible of the most pain- 
ful sensations lie in precisely those parts of the body 
which we can protect or heal, and which would be per- 
petually exposed to maiming or injury, did not their lia- 
bility to pain make us careful of their safe-keeping and 
well-being. The seat of the severest suffering is in 
almost all cases near the surface. The first touch of the 
surgeon's knife inflicts much greater pain than the deep 
incision, the laceration of the flesh than the division of 
the bone, the wounding or fracture of the arm or leg 
than the lesion of those vital organs which are subject to 
more occult laws, and can with less certainty be guarded 
from injury or restored from disease. In fine, pain, with 
few and sporadic exceptions, is most intense where the 



102 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

means of prevention or recovery are generally known 
or easily attainable. 

Now suppose a painless world. Imagine our children 
growing up without liability to suffering or its semblance, 
and our friends, our parents, those bowed with years, 
those who claim our devoted offices of love and rever- 
ence, subject to the death-producing agencies which must 
none the less exist and work, yet unw r arned by admoni- 
tory sensations of pain. This state of things could hardly 
fail to induce neglect. The most intimate offices of pa- 
rental and filial love would be superseded, and in the 
same proportion the affections would be deadened and 
their joy obliterated. Our homes w r ould lose their en- 
dearments, their sympathies, their most grateful remem- 
brances. There would be coldness where there is now 
the tenderest love, and severed existence where there is 
now the closest union. Imagine, too, the active portion 
of mankind no longer liable to suffering. What reckless 
exposures would there be, what unconscious neglect of 
physical laws, what suicidal feats of strength and endur- 
ance ! The maimed would outnumber the uninjured, 
and the needless, foolhardy deaths would be more than 
those that now occur by disease and casualty combined. 
These considerations certainly deprive human suffering 
of its mystery, and bring forth rich testimony from the 
severest experiences of our earthly condition to the 
goodness of the Creator. 

I have spoken thus far of physical suffering only. In 
verifying the Christian view of the Divine character, we 
encounter not only the pain that befalls men in the ordi- 
nary course of nature, but also moral evil, and the misery 
that flows from it. Here we must remember at the out- 
set, that in the nature of things wrong-doing cannot be 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 103 

harmless. Right and wrong are not arbitrary, but essen- 
tial cha7*acteristics. The wrong is in its very essence 
unfit to be done, and, if the right has beneficent results, 
it is impossible that its opposite should not have opposite 
results. Omnipotence can no more deprive the wrong 
of its power of harming, than it can make tw T o and 
two five. 

In the next place, free agents must needs have the 
power of doing wrong, in order that they may have the 
power of doing right ; and if they have the power of 
doing wrong, it is impossible that they should not exer- 
cise it, at least in the earlier stages of their history, and 
until the entire range of moral experiments has been 
exhausted. The only question then is, whether this per- 
ilous gift of free-agency is consistent with the Divine 
benevolence. In answering this, we must suppose that 
the plan of the Creator would embrace every kind and 
degree of happiness of which finite beings are suscepti- 
ble. Now does not our consciousness assure us that free- 
agency rightly exercised is the source of immeasurably 
higher happiness than can flow from all other sources 
combined ? With what shall we compare it ? With 
intelligence ? Intelligence brings labor, care, and pain, 
and of itself bestows no counterbalancing joy. What 
we call the pleasures of knowledge or of the intellect 
derive their zest from the moral nature. Emotions and 
affections that have their source in a loyal and obedient 
will alone enable us to assimilate the materials of knowl- 
edge, and to make them conducive to our nutriment and 
growth, our elasticity and gladness of spirit. Without 
this moral solvent, the acquisitions of the intellect are 
but burdensome and oppressive crudities, ministering to 
our isolation, misanthropy, and restlessness. But if such 



104 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

be the case, it was the part of Divine love to provide 
for the highest form of happiness, that flowing from 
moral goodness, even though it were foreseen that count- 
less multitudes would spurn the noble gift. And if moral 
excellence be the supreme good, then is there no more 
merciful portion of the Divine administration than the 
wretchedness that results from human guilt. The issue 
of sin in misery is the surest way of awakening repent- 
ance and producing reformation. Sin never looks so 
appalling and offensive as when it is mirrored back from 
its consequences to the sinner's own consciousness. By 
the desolation and misery into which men plunge them- 
selves and others, they are made to abhor themselves, 
and to cherish purer affections and better purposes ; 
while by the same exhibition the innocent are kept 
innocent, the tempted held back from evil, the virtuous 
confirmed in their good principles and habits, and the 
philanthropic urged to more vigorous efforts for the 
restoration of the fallen and the well-being of their 
race. 

I have thus far spoken of the goodness of God as 
manifested in the general administration of the universe. 
Christianity goes further than this, and affirms his provi- 
dence in all events, his paternal providence over every 
member of his human family. The Divine Providence 
has for its rational grounds the native inertness of matter, 
and the necessary omnipresence of the Deity. 

Inertness — that is, the tendency to remain in its pres- 
ent state, whatever that be — enters into our conception 
of matter. As I said in a former Lecture, philosophy 
has abandoned the search after efficient material forces. 
Mind, will, is recognized as the ultimate cause of all 
motions, changes, phenomena, events. The laws of na- 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 105 

ture (so called) resolve themselves into wonted methods 
of the Divine administration. If we deny this, our only 
alternative hypothesis is the pantheistic conception of 
an inherent force, an immanent and active will, a self- 
determining power, in matter. But when we provision- 
ally adopt this hypothesis, we find it impossible to con- 
ceive of the initial impulse, of the beginning to be, of 
the self-existence or self-creation of matter ; and we are 
thus thrown back upon the belief in a creative will dis- 
tinct from the material universe, which will, as it was 
the sole cause of the beginning to be, must equally be 
the sole cause of the ever-varying phenomena of con- 
tinued being, of the ceaseless change of material objects, 
inert in themselves, which could no more alter their 
mode of being than, they could begin to be without a 
Supreme Will. 

Again, the omnipresence of God is involved in the 
very idea of his existence. But can his be an inert 
presence ? Where he is in the plenitude of his al- 
mightiness, can aught take place otherwise than by his 
will ? 

There is no room for the old distinction between a 
general and a particular providence. The former can- 
not be without the latter. We can make no discrim- 
ination between the greater and the less, which does not 
betray the shallowness of our speculations, and convict 
us of the folly of meting the universe with our own pal- 
try measuring-tape, and sounding infinity with our own 
brief line. Do we say that God governs vast events, 
and exercises no direct supervision over the smaller con- 
cerns and interests of his children ? What affairs even 
of nations, worlds, systems, are vast to him whose stars 
crowd by myriads the field of telescopic vision, and pave 



106 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

the highway of the heavens as countless as the sands on 
the sea-shore ? And, on the other hand, what concerns 
of sentient, reasoning man are not vast, compared with 
the structure and functions of those curiously and won- 
derfully formed beings, bearing every token of the Di- 
vine handwork, to which a drop of water or a fig-seed 
is as a universe ? Embosomed as we are between twin 
infinities, between the immeasurably immense and the 
inconceivably minute, we dare not set metes and bounds 
to the universal Providence. 

" To him no high, no low, no great, no small, 
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all." 

A paternal providence is claimed by many as a truth 
of experience. The privileged and happy, if at the same 
time devout, see more than a beneficent order of nature 
and flow of events in their own conditions and lives, and 
think that they can recognize the Divine care and love 
for themselves individually. The favorite utterance of 
piety is, " How precious also are thy thoughts unto me ! 
How great is the sum of them ! If I should count 
them, they are more in number than the sand." There 
are in every happy life numerous instances in which the 
course of events might seem to have received a special 
direction for the benefit of the individual. Large por- 
tions of our lives — crises, it may be, on which our whole 
earthly destiny depended — have been shaped without any 
planning or foresight by ourselves or others, — by what 
the world terms chance, — by circumstances in themselves 
trivial, — by our coming, as it seemed fortuitously, into 
relation with certain persons or objects rather than with 
others, or at one moment rather than at another. An 
interview called casual, a delay or hinderance regarded 
as accidental, an act so slight and so utterly indifferent in 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 107 

any aspect visible at the time of action that there seemed 
a hundred chances against one that it would not be per- 
formed, has often determined all the essential events of 
a lifetime. A conjuncture of circumstances in itself 
trivial, and which a day or two, perhaps a few minutes, 
earlier or later would have had no traceable conse- 
quences, is often the critical moment of one's fortune, 
the first of a series of causes from which his whole sub- 
sequent happiness flows. It is contended that in these 
cases, in the absence or feebleness of proximate causes, 
there is a distinct revelation of the paternal providence 
of God. 

But in dwelling on the happy experiences thus traced 
to the love of our Father, we must not forget that the 
statement we have made applies equally to adverse crises, 
prolonged series of misfortunes, ruined hopes, thwarted 
plans. The slight initial causes in whose train flow the 
most momentous consequences., for evil no less than for 
good, to men, communities, and nations, form one of the 
most curious chapters in human history. A striking 
instance occurs to me. In the Twelfth Congress, which 
declared the war of 1812 between this country and 
Great Britain, a new Senator of the United States, who 
voted for the war and voted with the war-party on all 
preliminary questions, was chosen by a legislative major- 
ity of one. A member in the majority of the legislature 
that elected him was chosen by a majority of one. That 
majority was given him by a man who had never before 
voted with the party that favored the war, but was 
induced to do so in this instance simply because the 
cattle of the opposing candidate had trespassed on his 
corn-field. Had the opposing candidate for the National 
Senate been chosen, the war would probably not have 



108 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

taken place. 1 That trespass, then, may be said to have 
caused the war. Now while I have the profounclest 
faith in a benignant providence always and everywhere, 
— a providence that often reveals itself in the fee- 
bleness or the fortuitous aspect of proximate causes, — 
I cannot but regard it as a providence that ordains not 
only the blessings which we desire and rejoice in, but 
the sorrows that may nourish our higher natures, and 
the retributive visitations which men or nations may both 
merit and need. 

But while God wounds only in love, and punishes that 
he may restore, our language bears one testimony of very 
great and incontrovertible force to the preponderance of 
the joy-giving element in the Divine Providence. It is 
implied and employed in the use of the word happiness, — 
at once an atrociously irreligious and a profoundly relig- 
ious word. It means that which happens or chances, 
thus excluding in its form the agency of an overruling 
Providence. Yet in the application of this ungodly word 
to felicitous events alone, we bear tacit testimony to a 
benignant order in human affairs ; — we confess that, if 
we are the subjects of chance, it is of a chance that plays 
with loaded dice ; that is, we deny the sovereignty of 
chance in the very act of admitting it, and affirm that 
of Providence in the very act of denying it ; for, were 
events fortuitous, the happenings to us would be as often 
afflictive as they were glad, and happiness would never 
have been chosen to designate joy. While it might not 
be safe to reason from individual experiences, the vast 

l The final vote in the Senate for the declaration of war was 19 against 13; 
but had the anti-war party commanded only one additional vote, the declara- 
tion would have been postponed, and in a very few days the news of the 
repeal of the Orders in Council would have rendered the war impossible, by 
removing its principal grounds and pretexts. 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 109 

preponderance of pleasurable sensations over the con- 
trary, — the system under which happiness is the rule, 
misery the exception, — is a clear and full demonstration 
of a fatherly providence, which wills and promotes the 
enjoyment and well-being of its subjects. 

There is also an inward experience which cannot mis- 
lead us, — a spiritual providence by which we are pre- 
pared for such events as God may send, strengthened for 
our burdens, sustained under our trials, by resources of 
which we were unconscious till the stress of need, and in 
which we rejoice to trace the direct action of a Father, 
who loves us more than we can love ourselves, upon our 
minds and hearts. These experiences are often clear and 
emphatic ; they multiply upon our recognition in propor- 
tion to the constancy and thoroughness of our introspec- 
tion ; and they leave in the most reflective and devout 
spirits an assurance too profound for doubt, that God is 
with us in his fatherly providence where we most need 
his inspiration and support, in the region of our sensibili- 
ties and affections. 

I have spoken of the argument from experience. 
There is in the aggregate of human experience a .coun- 
ter-argument which we are bound to meet fully and 
fairly. I refer to the case of the multitudes, the myriads 
of the utterly unprivileged, — of those who have their 
full share of calamity and sorrow without access to the 
faith which might enable them" to sustain their trials 
patiently and hopefully, and to transmute them into nour- 
ishment for the moral nature. It cannot be denied that, 
for unnumbered millions, if this life were their only 
being, or if they were destined to suffer hereafter for 
lack of what they had no means of doing or becoming 
here, it had been better that they had not been born. 



110 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

But if the earthly life be for them a brief embryo-state 
from which they emerge into a realm of light, priv- 
ilege, and joy, it is easy to conceive that their pres- 
ent condition subserves essential purposes of the Divine 
Providence, which we may not now fully understand. 
Let me borrow an illustration from the physical history 
of our planet. There were, long before man or the 
higher animals had birth, geological ages during which 
rank, luxuriant vegetation overspread large portions of 
the world. Forests rose in beautiful verdure, ferns and 
grasses clothed the plains, though there were none to 
enjoy the shade or to feed upon the harvest ; and genera- 
tions of these forests, unnumbered growths of this profuse 
vegetation, were swept by volcanic fires, and piled heap 
upon heap in massive strata. Had one of the elder sons 
of God, not endowed with foresight, beheld this process, 
he might have questioned the Divine wisdom, and asked, 
" To what purpose is this waste of what might feed and 
shelter living, reasoning, enjoying races ? " But these 
layers of charred forests are what now sustain our 
fires, and feed our forges, and propel our ships, and 
promise supplies for human art and comfort for myriads 
of years to come ; and all generations will bless the 
Omniscient Wisdom whose seeming waste is their un- 
exhausted wealth and strength. Spiritual geology, too, 
may have its ages whose meaning is to be studied only 
in the remote future. This seeming loss and waste of 
souls on earth, redeemed no doubt in heaven, may have 
its end in the sure development and ultimate supremacy 
of goodness through the whole universe of God. It may 
be essential to the education of our race, that the history 
of every form of evil should be written out in gigantic 
characters ; and the vicious experience of earlier ages 



THE LOVE OF GOD. Ill 

may have its ultimate result in ages that shall roll on in 
undimmed holiness and blessedness. He who lays the 
beams of his chambers in the waters, while their topstone 
is above the heavens, may be laying the sunken foun- 
dations of that kingdom of universal righteousness, in 
which not future generations alone, but those too whose 
earthly destiny was beneath the floods of ignorance and 
depravity, shall have their eternal dwelling-place. 

I grant that, if this life be regarded as a period of 
probation and the only period for all men, as it is a pro- 
bationary state and may be the only one for the fully 
privileged, the condition of the unprivileged would be 
irreconcilable with the Divine love. But, so far as these 
last are concerned, is it not reasonable to suppose tjjis 
world simply a birthplace and conservatory of spirits that 
are to be trained and nurtured elsewhere ? Go into a 
plantation of fruit-trees in which orchard and nursery are 
combined. You will there find some trees that have 
soil-room and sky-room enough to reach a normal growth, 
and to perform their function as fruit-bearers, that is, to 
fulfil their destiny ; and those trees are in a probationary 
state. Their worth will be tested by the quality and 
quantity of their fruit. If their fruit be poor or scanty, 
after suitable efforts to improve it, they will be cut down, 
and others will take their places. If their fruit be rich 
and abundant, they will be cherished with the utmost 
diligence. But a large part of these trees are to have 
their probation elsewhere, it may be in richer soil and 
under more skilful culture. The only aim now is to 
make them live, to give them shape as existences of their 
own order, to establish their relations with soil and sky ; 
and when they are fairly made alive and capable of 
prolonged existence, they will be transplanted to the 



112 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

respective sites where their fruit-bearing capacity can be 
developed and tested. 

Now the thronging ranks of the unprivileged can be 
compared only to these closely crowded trees planted on 
purpose to be transplanted. They do not get their moral 
training here. They do not fairly make their election 
between good and evil. They know so little of moral 
distinctions, that the wrong which they seem to choose is 
in no sense the choice of the soul, and may not unfitly 
be regarded as a mere habitude of the body. What they 
do get here is life, — the capacity of an endless life. 
They come into those relations w r ith time and space 
which are essential to the detached, personal existence 
of rf a finite spirit. They are placed, also, in certain de- 
terminate relations w^ith fellow-spirits, which may through 
all eternity render their social condition immeasurably 
happier than it could have been had they been isolated 
existences, each brought into being by a separate act of 
omnipotence. They are made each to have some expe- 
rience of the straitnesses, infirmities, and sufferings of 
this mortal state, and none can say how essential a part 
this experience may bear, as a source of gratitude when 
God shall have "enlarged their borders," as a term of 
comparison by which they may know how highly they 
are blessed, as a starting-point to which they may meas- 
ure back the path on which the Divine love shall lead 
them. 

At the same time, under precisely this system, while 
to many individuals existence and the capacity of being 
advantageously transplanted are God's chief and best 
gifts, a process of education for the race is developing 
itself along the ages, — a process by which undoubtedly 
the maximum of active goodness, the most vigorous and 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 113 

salutary exercise of moral freedom, may be insured. 
Had equal privilege been at the outset ordained for all, 
and preserved by the interposition of Providence from 
age to age, human society would present only a dead 
level of tame and passive goodness, with hardly vitality 
enough to merit the noble, manly designation of virtue. 
There would be no room for the loftier and more heroic 
forms of excellence. The greatest names on the annals 
of moral attainment and achievement would never have 
been written. Nay, there would have been no place 
for the "name which is above every name," and for the 
tender reverence, profound gratitude, and warm affec- 
tion which, clustering around it and rising from it with 
enhanced fervor to Him who so loved' the world that he 
sent his Son, form the richest portion of man's spiritual 
experience. And when the world shall have been all 
reclaimed, when the nursery shall all be fruitful orchard- 
ground, there will have been created in the veins of hu- 
manity, to be transmitted to sinless generations, and to 
be translated to its. ultimate higher sphere of being, a 
vastly nobler, hardier, more energetic type of moral and 
spiritual character than could have come into existence, 
had the plan of Providence been that of equal privilege 
for all and always. 

I have thus shown you that the seeming exceptions 
to a benign Providence are not really objections, when 
viewed in connection with the intensely strong positive 
arguments -that may be urged in its behalf. 

This subject furnishes an impressive illustration of the 
office of revelation as regards the truths of natural re- 
ligion. In the observed course of human experience 
there are contrasted facts that seem at first sight as 
utterly irreconcilable as if they flowed from the rival 



114 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

working of a benevolent and a malevolent Deity. There 
is, on the one hand, mercy, blessing, privilege ; on the 
other, the seeming absence of all these. Nature, unen- 
lightened by revelation, refuses to embrace these facts in 
one comprehensive generalization. Their harmony eludes 
her search. Revelation utters the word Providence, 
around which they all crystallize, and opens the immortal 
life which proffers scope for their development in a co- 
herent system initiated and crowned by the infinite love 
of God. The truth, Providence, belongs to natural re- 
ligion ; revelation furnishes the clew which leads us 
through its labyrinth, lets down from heaven the hand 
that unseals its mysteries, utters the voice that interprets 
its harmonies of love and praise. 



LECTURE VI. 

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 

My last Lecture was on the Divine Goodness, and 
especially on the Providence of God considered as a 
doctrine of human experience, that is, of natural re- 
ligion, and on the objections urged against it on the 
ground of the unequal distribution of privileges in this 
world. The Scriptures affirm the providence of God in a 
more general sense, his providence — forethought, deter- 
mined provision — in the powers and faculties of man as 
adapted to this world and his place in it ; and it is to a 
single branch of this wide theme that I ask your atten- 
tion in the present Lecture. 

Man is proud of art and skill more than of all things 
else. Virtue and piety are, indeed, greater and nobler, 
but they make men humble, not proud ; and even they 
are indebted to the arts of civilized life for the basis of in- 
telligence, knowledge, culture, and refinement, on which 
alone they can be built up in their full strength and 
beauty, and by means of which alone they can have their 
due manifestation and influence. But what man has 
done for himself and for his earthly home, — the wastes 
he has reclaimed ; the cities he has built ; the grandeur 
and beauty he has embodied in architecture, enshrined in 
marble, portrayed on canvas ; the enslaving to his uses of 
the giant and wayward forces of nature ; the overcoming 
of obstacles that once seemed insurmountable ; the sover- 



116 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

eign command which he exercises in the entire realm of 
material forces and agencies, — these are the burden of 
his unceasing self-praise ; and especially we are never 
weary of admiring the vast mechanical and artistical pro- 
gress of the last and the present generation. Meanwhile, 
the perpetual voice of the Bible is : " All power belong- 
eth unto God." I have taken for my subject this evening 
the Natural Theology of Art, and my aim will be to show 
that human art is but a manifestation of the Divine 
Providence ; that God is, as the Scriptures represent 
him, the sole contriver, artificer, builder, — the author of 
all the vast, graceful, curious, and complicated forms that 
grow under the hands of man ; and that the achievements 
of our race are equally with the sun in his glory, and the 
stars on their circuits, and the changing seasons, " but 
the varied God." 

Let me first remind you that in art man does nothing 
except what God either does or provides for in nature. 
He only follows out indications that are a divine directory 
for his procedure. He creates nothing ; he only finds 
and uses what God has made. He does not confer prop- 
erties ; he only discovers and applies them. We talk of 
raw material ; but there is none. If there were, it would 
forever remain so. What we call by that name has in 
it all that is ever made out of it. Our paving and build- 
ing stones lie, in the quarry, in parallel strata, and with 
crystals so grouped and separated as to invite the very 
cleavage they receive ; and the blocks in which they 
are laid or heaved correspond in their surfaces with the 
natural divisions of the mother rock. The veins and 
fibres of our forest-trees guide, rather than yield to, the 
axe, the lathe, and the plane ; and they might have been 
of essentially the same substance, and yet so gnarled and 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 117 

knotted as to defy the accumulated science of centuries. 
Our silk we could not wind or use, had it not been first 
reeled on the cocoon with a delicacy far surpassing our 
finest handwork. We make no dyes, but dip our rai- 
ment in brilliant and enduring hues, beautiful as the 
rainbow or the sunset clouds, which God has treasured 
for us in barks and roots and insects. The telegraph is 
no work of ours, nor yet an invention of our time. The 
agent which it employs has been from creation's dawn 
the medium of all communication between mind and 
matter, brain and muscle, brain and brain ; and in the 
phenomena of mesmerism and pseudo-spiritualism there 
can be no doubt that along air-lines and for indefinite 
distances thoughts and words are sent with the same 
unerring accuracy that marks their transmission on the 
artificial lightning-path. We have only arrested for a 
specific purpose a force which throbs from zone to zone, 
leaps from sky to earth, darts from earth to ocean, 
courses in the sap of the growing tree, runs along the 
nervous tissue of the living man, and can be commanded 
for the speaking wires simply because it is and works 
everywhere. 

Permit me to carry out this view somewhat in detail 
with reference to water, the most essential of all mechan- 
ical agents, with w r hich art does literally nothing of 
which God has not given the model or the hint. 

How numerous beyond all computation are the artis- 
tical contrivances of which water is the means or the 
object ! Not only is it the destined home of the ship, 
— that noblest masterwork of human genius, that most 
expressive type of man as the conqueror and lord of na- 
ture, — but without water how utterly impossible would 
it be to bring together materials for the ship, or for any 



118 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

other costly and complex structure ! Without its diffu- 
sion in quantities and qualities adequate not only to sus- 
tain life, but to supply the thousand-fold greater demands 
of art, where were the triumphs of that monarch of our 
century, the steam-king ? Now mark how perfect, as 
regards human industry, isu the Divine distribution of 
water, — gathered into oceans for the world's highway, 
— indenting the shore in bays and creeks without whose 
shelter navigation would be impossible, and the ship a 
mere splendid conception, — radiating in rivers which 
alone could - develop the resources and furnish the mate- 
rials that freight our commerce, — branching into streams 
and rivulets to irrigate the meadows, to twine among the 
valleys, and to laugh by the poor man's door, — now 
falling over precipices, and acquiring force to propel the 
wheels of those mighty Babels that weave the wealth of 
nations, — now swollen by vernal thaws and rains, and 
bearing forests from their birthplace to the builder's 
axe. 

Mark next the beautiful simplicity of the Divine mech- 
anism by which the distribution is made. There is un- 
ceasing waste, and yet unceasing fulness ; — the ocean 
replenishing the fountain, the fountain speeding with 
trembling haste to bear its tribute to the ocean ; the 
river pouring its current into the great sea, and anon 
those selfsame waters, through cloud, torrent, brook, and 
streamlet, seeking the river again. The circulation of 
the waters is like that of the blood in the human body ; — 
the ocean, the vast heart ; the rivers, the veins that 
carry home its tide ; the clouds, the arteries that dis- 
tribute it anew ; the brooks and fountains corresponding 
to the capillary vessels that bear the rose-tint to the 
cheek of youth and beauty. The system, too, is self- 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART 119 

adjusting, full of mutual checks and offsets, the very 
circumstances that create the need expediting the supply. 
The solar heat, as it parches the continent, distils and 
evaporates the adjacent water of the ocean or lake, form- 
ing clouds which, like aerial burden-ships, float away 
with their freight of bloom and harvest wealth, and are 
drawn by the partial vacuum to the very regions where 
intense heat has most rarefied the lower strata of the 
atmosphere, at the same time threatening the hope of the 
husbandman and exhausting the fountains of man's in- 
dustrial energy. 

But for the numberless demands which man, more as 
an artisan than as a consumer, makes on nature's res- 
ervoirs, distribution is needed in immeasurably larger 
quantities than could be endured in the form of rain in 
our fields and about our dwellings, unless we were 
amphibious, and our grain and grasses aquatic plants. 
Mark next, then, the Divine providence by which the 
mountains that must forever remain uninhabitable are 
made the ocean's procreant cradle. The levity of the 
clouds as compared with the lower strata of the atmos- 
phere, lifts a large proportion of them to a height at 
which they are drifted against the tops of the loftiest 
mountains, where, amid 

" Unceasing thunder and eternal foam," 

or in hail and snow, they discharge their burdens, and 
form those fierce and rapid torrents which, as they 
approach human dwellings, grow deep and broad, tame 
and tractable, so that the very stream which had rolled 
huge crags and uprooted primeval forests from the moun- 
tain-side can be resisted by the feeble stroke of a child's 
oar, or made the servant of all work in a machine-shop. 



120 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

Mark now the relation of human art to this vast sys- 
tem of circulation. The raft, in which form alone could 
lumber be delivered at its appropriate depots without 
labor and cost that would make a well-built house a 
luxury attainable by none but the very rich, simply 
avails itself of the ocean's feeding season and of its chan- 
nels of supply, — commits itself to their swollen bosom, 
— forces itself upon them as the companion of their inev- 
itable journey. The ship, hardly less essential to mate- 
rial civilization than is the Bible to spiritual culture, is 
the most passive of all creatures, depends for its motion 
on the sails which diminish its power of resistance and 
render it even more hopelessly passive, and yields itself 
to the very atmospheric currents which sustain the circu- 
lation of the waters by driving the clouds landward. 
The water-wheel, which multiplies and cheapens to an 
inconceivable degree the comforts and luxuries of civil- 
ized life, merely plants itself in the descending path of 
the stream or river, and revolves because its axis is so 
secured that it cannot be floated down. The aqueduct, 
which gushes as a fountain of health in the great city, 
bears the same relation to the course of the stream which 
feeds it, that is borne by the air-line turnpike to the 
serpentine road that leads by every farm-house ; and 
depends for its flow on the gradual declivity by which 
the ocean-born clouds descend from their mountain-exile 
to their native home. Lastly, the steam-engine, the 
most versatile of all the works of man, — now bearing on 
its fire-wings migrating multitudes and costly merchan- 
dise across the waste of waters, now twisting a gossamer 
thread or mending a web, — is but the intensifying 
(though in miniature) and harnessing to the industrial 
yoke of the very process by which the vapor exhaled 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 121 

from the ocean waters the hills and makes the desert 
glad. 

I might still further illustrate the providential element 
in human art by reminding you of the limitations of art. 
Take for an instance the cotton manufacture. The Sea- 
Island cotton, you know, is greatly superior to the 
Upland in length and fineness of staple. Now no mode 
of culture, no maritime dressing, no copiousness of irriga- 
tion, can overcome this difference. A profounder chem- 
istry than ours entails on these respective soils their own 
peculiar growth. Nor can machinery, however delicate, 
compensate for this difference, so as to fabricate fine 
lawns and muslins from Upland cotton unmixed. In- 
deed, that we are able to spin cotton at all is in no sense 
owing to the perfectness of our machinery. There are 
many downy substances in nature which, to the super- 
ficial or the naked eye, offer as fair a promise of utility as 
cotton, yet which can never be made into thread or 
cloth. The late Rev. Dr. Cutler, of Hamilton in this 
State, memorable as a pioneer in the settlement of Ohio, 
was the first American botanist of his day, and was 
eminently utilitarian in his scientific pursuits. He cast 
his eye upon the common silk-weed, or milk-weed, 
Asclepias cornuti, whose seeds ripen in a most luscious 
bed of down, as a plant which might rival or supersede 
cotton, and enable us at the North to raise our own 
clothing, and that on soil available for hardly any other 
purpose. His researches in this matter gained merited 
attention, and, it was said, — I know not whether the 
story be authentic, — were the specific ground on which 
certain literary honors, which he on every account richly 
deserved, were bestowed by one of our New England 
colleges. But they had no more valuable result. On 
6 



122 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

trial it was found that the silk-weed has an incorrigibly 
short fibre, and of course the spindle cannot make it 
longer ; that it has a straight fibre, which cannot be 
pulled without breaking, while cotton has a curled and 
crooked fibre which the strong pulling of the machinery 
only straightens ; and that it has no hooks or teeth, so 
that it cannot be permanently twisted, whereas the fibres 
of cotton are indented with teeth like those of a saw, 
which hook into one another w T hen the fibres are twisted, 
and without which no force on earth could so twist them 
that they should remain twisted. 

The sugar manufacture offers us a similar illustration. 
Sugar, in order to become fit for the market or the table, 
must be granulated, or formed into minute polyhedral 
crystals, each capable of adhering to its neighbor crys- 
tals, as in lumps, without their running together as in a 
paste. The sugar-cane, the beet, and the maple are the 
only plants of common and easy cultivation from which 
sugar has been successfully made. Yet, as a chemical 
ingredient, sugar enters into numerous vegetable pro- 
ductions, and into none, perhaps, more largely than into 
our common maize, from which the manufacture, as has 
been estimated, would at least double the agricultural rev- 
enue of the Free States of our Union. With this view 
the corn-stalk has been subjected to faithful and elabo- 
rate experiment. The juice has been expressed, and has 
presented hopefully all the characteristics of the cane- 
juice ; but the modes of crystallizing the cane-juice, and 
all other modes that science or skill could suggest, have 
failed, simply because crystallization is a process, not of 
art, but of the divine order of nature. Art can merely 
supply the conditions, but cannot impose the law, and 
the Creator has imposed the law on the cane-juice, and 
not on the corn -juice. 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 123 

These illustrations may suffice to show the entire 
dependence of human art and skill on the infinite provi- 
dence of God, — that providence which has sown in the 
bosom of creation the seeds of all uses and capabilities, 
whose harvest ripens along the ages under the same genial 
care which, in the briefer spaces of a simpler husbandry, 
renews the face of the earth, sends the early and the 
latter rain, and crowns the year with plenty. 

I would next call your attention to the physical struc- 
ture of man as specially adapted to the purposes of art. 
There are in one of our devotional hymns two lines 
peculiarly childish in sound, which yet contain the whole 
theory of civilization, and expound the earthly position 
and destiny of the human race. They are, — 

" Why was my body formed erect, 
While brutes bow down to earth? " 

Were it not for this simple difference, man might be 
possessed of all the native intellectual capacity he now 
has, and yet could gain scarcely any accurate knowledge 
of the universe, could embody his ideas only in the 
rudest forms, could transmit very little of his experience 
and wisdom or their results to future generations, and 
could bequeath to his immediate posterity hardly any- 
thing more precious than some savage booth or burrow- 
ing-place. 

Man is perhaps the most feeble animal on earth in 
proportion to his size, yet he easily walks as sovereign, 
leads the behemoth in his train, tows the leviathan by 
his warp, makes the everlasting hills bow before him, 
lays his mandate and his chain on the giant forces of 
nature. And it is chiefly by means of the one divinely 
fashioned instrument, the hand, — through the elevation, 



124 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

expansion, and more complex organization of the very 
digits which we trace in less perfect development in the 
anterior limbs of every quadruped. The hand, — so 
slender and flexible that it might seem fitted neither for 
doing nor -enduring, yet whose closely knit web-work of 
nerves and sinews concentrates the entire strength of the 
body, constituting a mightier force in proportion to its 
magnitude than is found in the whole universe beside ; — 
the hand, combining all mechanical powers in one, — the 
fingers jointed levers, the sinews pulleys, whose elastic 
force is but imperfectly typified when by a series of arti- 
ficial pulleys a slender silken thread is made to sustain as 
heavy a weight as a man could carry, the wrist-joint 
a perpetual screw without whose circular motion no 
screw of steel would ever find its way into its socket ; 
— the hand, capable one moment of wielding a giant's 
strength, and the next of subserving the most delicate 
uses, dissecting the microscopic proportions of a flower- 
cup or an insect's wing, marking with the graver air- 
lines subtile as the sunbeams, copying the vanishing 
hues of clouds and rosebuds and the human countenance, 
embodying thought in forms so ethereal that they might 
seem inbreathed by viewless spirits, rather than wrought 
by material agency, — the hand it is that makes man 
what he is, God's viceroy upon the earth. Reflect that 
there is no mechanical operation, whether of ruder craft 
or of the highest art, the capacity of which, is not inherent 
in the hand, the direction of which is not one of the com- 
plex movements of which the hand is susceptible, the 
efficacy of which does not depend on the guidance or 
restraint of the hand. And what do we mean when we 
speak of water-power or steam-power taking the place of 
the hand ? Simply this, — that, imperfectly copying some 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOIWN HUMAN ART. 125 

one or more of the countless mimber of divinely shaped 
instruments obtained by division or combination from our 
two wrist-joints and palms and our ten digits, we con- 
struct certain artificial hands, and then supply to them 
by the impetus of falling water or expanding steam the 
force which accrues from the principle of life to the 
nerves and sinews of the vital organism. 

I have selected the hand as the prime executive mem- 
ber of the body, and I scarcely know of an object in the 
universe which so richly and beautifully manifests the 
Creator's wisdom, love, and providence, so that, were I 
obliged to confine myself to a single illustration, I would 
choose this before all others. But there is hardly one of 
the perceptive or active powers of the body which does 
not on analysis reveal kindred adaptations to industrial 
uses, showing that man brings into the world and carries 
through life fitnesses, capacities, and instrumentalities, 
which render art less his choice and achievement than a 
divinely imposed necessity of his nature. 

Nor are these adaptations confined to the organs and 
faculties which we usually connect in our thought with 
industrial energy. They may be traced equally in the 
interior structure, in the vital organs and functions. 
Consider, for instance, the nutritive process in man. I 
look indeed with no complacency on the lot of the over- 
tasked laborer, whether he be a slave by arbitrary law or 
by a no less tyrannical necessity, and I doubt not that in 
a future better than the present all labor will find its due 
meed of repose, relaxation, and space for the culture of 
the higher faculties. But thus far the requirements of 
human industry have demanded of the majority of man- 
kind the constant and vigorous employment of the active 
powers through the greater part of every day ; and it is 



126 CHRISTIANITY WE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

believed that in no other animal does nutrition occupy 
and digestion appropriate to its own purposes so little 
time as in man. A single hour in the day might suffice 
for the taking of food (in our country many abridge even 
this scanty allotment, though not without injury or peril) ; 
and if food be taken in moderation, it may pass through 
all its essential stages without impeding the physical 
energy. Thus man may toil his ten or twelve hours 
daily with no cost to health or decline of strength. On 
the other hand, the ruminating animals demand for 
nutrition the greater part- of their time, and are there- 
fore incapable of anything approaching the vigorous and 
persistent bodily exertion necessary in many departments 
of human industry. The ox forms no exception. His 
strength, indeed, enables him to draw heavy weights ; 
but he can be quickened only by cruelty, and then but 
for brief periods, beyond the naturally sluggish gait of 
his species. Nor does the sustained velocity of the 
camel, when we consider the length of his steps, bear 
any comparison to that persistent celerity of the human 
limbs which is essential alike to the more subtile pro- 
cesses and the immense aggregate of man's achievements 
in the industrial arts. Even the horse, man's most 
efficient helper, yields to him in the power of continuous 
effort. He needs so much time for feeding, that he is 
never capable of so many hours of unintermitted labor as 
man, and even in mere locomotion, it is well known that 
in a month or any long period of time a well-trained 
pedestrian will pass over more ground than the best- 
trained horse. You will perceive the pertinence of this 
comparison to the topic under discussion, when you 
reflect that there are not a few departments of human 
industry, and not infrequent industrial emergencies, in 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 127 

which persistency of labor is no less essential than artis- 
tical skill, and that this persistency is due, not to man's 
will or genius, but to the providence of the Creator, 
which has thus fitted him for his place and office as an 
industrial agent. 

Again, it is man's boast that he can carry his industry 
and art over the whole world, and surround himself with 
their products in every climate. Let us look somewhat 
in detail at the providential element in this cosmopolitan 
adaptation, in which man stands alone among the inhab- 
itants of the earth. It depends on the joint functions of 
circulation and respiration. In the severity of winter we 
may observe a strong contrast between different classes 
of the exposed. In the narrow streets and ill-built or 
poorly repaired houses of our towns and cities, we may 
find poverty-stricken families cowering with contracted 
limbs and chattering teeth over their scanty fires, while 
their dwellings often seem a mere lattice-work designed 
for the free passage of the northern blast. But with the 
thermometer at its lowest range, the woodman's axe 
plies with a vigorous and merry ring ; the farmer trudges 
unchilled by the side of his team ; and warm, glad life 
outspeeds the wind it braves in the swift sleighs that 
track our interior river-courses and lake-beds. The 
cause is manifestly internal, not external, — personal, 
not atmospheric. We are heated chiefly, not from with- 
out, but from within, — not by the fuel burned in our 
presence, but by the fuel which we ourselves consume. 
We carry about with us each his own hearth, with its 
vestal fire, — his own stove, with its perpetual radiation 
of heat. Our lungs are the seat of a constant combus- 
tion, literally of a coal-fire, kindled with our first breath, 
extinguished only with our last. The fuel is the carbon 



128 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

and hydrogen contained in our food, carried with other 
elements through the process of digestion and blood- 
making, conveyed to the lungs, and then oxidized, or, in 
other words, ignited and burned, by the oxygen inhaled 
from the atmosphere. 

This process it is that heats the body, and at the same 
time resists to a certain, and in some cases to an almost 
incredible degree, the effect of external heat. In extreme 
cold no particle of blood remains near the surface for 
more than an instant ; but the entire life-tide passes con- 
stantly to and from this central hearth, thus sending to 
the surface from moment to moment a freshly heated 
current. On the other hand, at an excessively high 
temperature, the ceaseless withdrawal of blood from the 
surface before it can become unduly heated preserves the 
internal temperature unchanged. This apparatus is imi- 
tated in that most effective mode of warming build- 
ings, — a system of hot- water pipes, in which a heated 
and rarefied current of water sets constantly from the 
furnace or lungs to the remoter parts of the system, and 
a cooled and condensed current returns, as constantly, to 
be heated over again. By virtue of this arrangement in 
the human frame, a variation of more than two hundred 
degrees in external heat, from the drying-room or the 
mouth of a forge to the lowest Arctic temperature, occa- 
sions a difference of not more than three or four degrees 
in the human body. 

Now the contrast between the suffering and the non- 
suffering in the severer exposures of our Northern climate 
is due to the different amounts of fuel employed to feed 
the internal flame. Fire, it is said, cannot warm the 
very poor, and this is because their meagre vegetable 
food, even if it seem unstinted, is deficient in carbon. 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 129 

On the other hand, those who meet the bleakest ex- 
posures without suffering are well fed on carbon-yielding 
food, and the fire that they carry with them never burns 
low for lack of fuel. The perfect working of this appa- 
ratus has its best illustration in the experience of Dr. 
Kane and his companions. With a temperature some- 
times of seventy degrees below zero, and for weeks 
together never rising above forty, often burrowing in the 
snow at these low temperatures, they found themselves 
more dependent on food than on fire. With an adequate 
supply of raw walrus meat and other unctuous, carbon- 
yielding food, they enjoyed health, comfort, vigor, gay- 
ety, hopefulness. When this supply fell short, the 
red-hot cabin stove seemed to yield no warmth, — na- 
ture drooped, sickened, and was ready to perish, reviving 
again, and glowing with its wonted fires, w^hen a kind 
Providence again spread their board in proportion to 
their need. 1 

This self-heating apparatus has a most essential bear- 
ing on man's industrial capacity. By virtue of it he can 
toil at the forge and the furnace-mouth, and chase the 
whale and trap the seal in Polar seas ; can say to the 
North, " Give up," and to the South, " Keep not back " ; 
can bring together the fruits of every zone, and blend in 
the products of his industry the contributions of every 
soil and climate. 

In man alone does this system attain a perfect adjust- 
ment. Other animals have their limits of latitude, some 
broader, some more restricted; none are cosmopolites. 
The camel and the reindeer could not change places. 

1 The reader can hardly fail to be reminded here that in high Arctic lati- 
tudes hardly any other than strongly unctuous food is attainable, and that of 
this, under ordinary circumstances, the natives are able to obtain an abundant, 
supply. 

6* I 



130 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

The elephant could not winter in Greenland. The polar 
bear swelters under the tempered heat of one of our 
October days. Man alone can live and work wherever 
land, iceberg, or ocean gives him room to stand or float. 

This vein of illustration might be followed much fur- 
ther ; but I leave it, to develop a still more intimate re- 
lation between human art and the Creator. All art is 
mathematical. Thus music is equally with arithmetic a 
science of numbers ; Pythagoras and Orpheus were 
equally identified with its early development ; and it was 
better understood by Newton, La Grange, and Euler, 
than by Mozart, Beethoven, or Rossini. The problem 
of the flute-note is discussed in the Principia with the 
harmony of the spheres. The relative magnitude of the 
pipes of the organ, the length of their vibrations respec- 
tively, and the qualities of the resulting tones, form a 
series of numerical proportions no less definite and uni- 
form than those which govern the planetary orbits ; and 
the reason why the reed-pipes are oftener out of tune 
than the others is, that they involve complex problems 
which still lack a complete solution, so that the rules for 
their construction are but empirical. Musical intervals 
are rightly designated by numerical names, and might be 
as well represented on the score by numbers as by notes. 
Colors have their mathematical no less than their chem- 
ical laws, and, as they are separated by the prism or 
combined in art, they indicate relations which can be 
expressed only by abstract formulae. Painting has no 
merit, unless the drawing be true, and all true drawing 
corresponds to one or another mode of mathematical 
projection. Architecture and mechanical operations of 
every kind depend on definite proportions, the violation 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 131 

of which can be compensated by no exuberance of beauty 
or misplaced accumulation of strength, but must issue in 
utter waste and ruin. Every department of engineering, 
the grading of the routes of travel, the construction of 
railways and bridges, the safety and efficiency of the 
water-wheel, the entire science of navigation, — all de- 
pend on mathematical laws coeval and coextensive with 
the universe, and navigation, on these laws as they span 
the solar system, and extend to stars whose distances 
elude calculation. The practical rules of even the in- 
ferior arts, the rules recognized by the laborer who 
knows not the multiplication-table, are derived from 
these world-embracing, universe-girdling laws. Were 
it not for the perception of these laws, we should still 
be at the lowest point of civilization. We should dare 
to rear only structures frail as a tent, or of ungainly and 
superfluous massiveness like the pyramids ; no machine 
or mechanical power beyond a rude knife or mallet 
would help us in our toil ; and our hollowed trunks of 
trees or bark canoes would still timidly skirt the sea- 
shore, and not venture beyond sight of land. 

But the mathematical science in which art has its 
birth is literally a portion of the Divine mind. So far 
as we are cognizant of it, God gives us glimpses of the 
plan of the universe, permits us to handle the compasses 
with which he meted out the earth and spread the heav- 
ens, enables us to see precisely as he sees. 

Here, then, is the highest dignity of art. It is the 
embodiment of absolute truth, the circumscription in 
material forms of universal and eternal laws, the tran- 
script by human hands of the thoughts of God. Its 
rules could have been devised, codified, and applied only 
by minds that were taken up by the Creator into his own 



132 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

point of view, — taught by his inspiration the very rela- 
tions and proportions that dwelt from all eternity in his 
omniscience, and were crystallized by his fiat in worlds, 
suns, and systems. 

We have now reached the climax of human art. Man 
disappears, and what he calls his work is but the man- 
ifestation of the one creative, all-pervading Spirit, — 
great and glorious in the massive and sky-reaching 
structures of human genius, in the world-subduing en- 
ergies of science, in the thronged marts of industry and 
traffic, no less than in the silent mountain, the primeval 
forest, or the many-twinkling smile and the multitudi- 
nous roar of the ocean-waves. 

While the discussion in which I have led you this 
evening has its fitting and almost necessary place in a 
course of Lectures on natural religion, I am the more 
glad to lead you over this ground, because the tendency 
of our times is, I might almost say, to art- worship, — to 
the sentiment which had its type and reached its cul- 
minating-point in the ancient monarch, when he said, 
" Is not this great Babylon that I have built, by the 
might of my power and for the honor of my majesty ? " 
Much of the practical skill, mechanical genius, and exec- 
utive capacity of the day is materialistic, — Titanic alike 
in its strength and its impiety, worshipping only its own 
capacity and its master-workmen. The rapidity and 
vastness of man's aggressions upon nature, the iron 
girdles with which he clasps the continent, the light- 
nings that bear his mandates from zone to zone, are 
constantly dwelt upon, not as outgoings of Omnipotent 
Wisdom, but as the apotheosis of art and science, and the 
great discoverers, inventors, and mechanicians of the age 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN ART. 133 

have honors rendered to them hardly less than divine. 
Meanwhile the sacred solitudes where holy men w T ere 
wont to commune in silence with the Almighty are soli- 
tudes no longer. Art obtrudes her forces where once 
were secluded shrines of natural grandeur and beauty, 
lays her iron track across the sunless ravines, wakes with 
the shout and tramp of her cars the echoes of the ancient 
hills. 

I have endeavored to show you that these works of 
man are in a higher and more intimate sense the works 
of God, — that in all in which man seeks his own glory 
he but manifests the glory of the Creator. " Let the 
people praise thee, O God, yea, let all the people praise 
thee." The views that I have presented blend in worship 
the tribute of art with the spontaneous incense that floats 
in temples on which there has been no sound of axe or 
hammer, — compels the throng and tide of toiling hands 
and throbbing brains and reasoning minds to take up the 
strain of universal nature, the song of angels and of ran- 
somed men : — " Great and marvellous are thy works, 
Lord God Almighty, — great where thy hand hath 
wrought in everlasting silence, no less marvellous where 
thine inspiration hath guided, thy might strengthened, 
thy loving providence crowned, the work of thy children 
upon earth." 



LECTURE VII. 

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 

My last Lecture related to the Divine Providence in 
art. I propose this evening to consider that same Prov- 
idence as manifested in the diversity of native endow- 
ments, capacities, and tendencies among the races of men 
and among individuals of the same race. 

The Scriptural idea of mankind is that of unity in 
diversity, — one body, many members, — the same spirit, 
diverse gifts and administrations, — one God, who work- 
eth all in all, but who distributes talents and capabilities 
with reference not alone to individual well-being, but 
equally to the common good. The solidarity of the race, 
so far from being a modern idea, has the most complete 
statement of it that was ever made in the twelfth chap- 
ter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and 
crops out, as one of his favorite conceptions, in numerous 
passages of his other Epistles. What more perfect ex- 
pression of it can human language admit of, than when, 
making Christ the head, he adds : " From whom the 
whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted from 
that which every joint supplieth, according to the effect- 
ual working of the measure in every part, maketh in- 
crease of the body to the edifying of itself in love " ? 

Let us see how this idea verifies itself in the actual 
condition of mankind. We will look first at the several 
races of men. Nothing can be more obvious than the 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 135 

indelibleness of national characteristics. Barbarism does 
not obliterate them, nor does the highest cultivation sup- 
plant them. The types may be improved or deteriorated, 
but they always remain distinct. The Jew is a Jew all 
the world over, and as much so now that he has had no 
country of his own for nearly eighteen centuries, as when 
Jerusalem was in its glory. The Greeks have retained 
their love of nature and of art through ages of depression 
and enslavement. 

" On Suli's rock and Parga's shore 
Exist the remnants of a line 
Such as the Doric mothers bore," 

and the nation is awaking from its slumber with the very 
same salient features which we trace in the Periclean 
era. The Hindoo, though imbued with all the literature 
and wisdom of Europe, still retains his Asiatic cast of 
mind and stamp of character ; while Europeans may live 
generation after generation in Hindostan or in China with- 
out becoming Orientalized, and may found and people 
colonies in every zone without any essential change of 
the traits that distinguished them in the countries whence 
they came. These things premised, we will now, to 
illustrate the solidarity of the human family in the differ- 
ences of the races, consider the Caucasian, the Asiatic, 
and the African groups of nations respectively, — a 
division by no means exhausting or scientifically exact, 
yet sufficiently so for the use I propose to make of it. 

The Caucasian race, wherever found, holds the fore- 
most place as to the cognitive and reasoning faculties, 
strength of will, love of power, and executive energy. 
These qualities have, indeed, been kept in abeyance 
during portions of the history of some nations, through 



136 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

the repressive force of religious superstition or of govern- 
mental oppression ; but there is no one of the group that 
has not at some period manifested them, and that would 
not be expected to manifest them were the limiting cir- 
cumstances partially removed. They seem born rulers 
and lawgivers, are impatient of restraint, uneasy subjects 
of arbitrary sway, and incapable of being permanently 
enslaved or subdued. They have the clear, scientific 
eye, the power and habit of ratiocination, an indisposi- 
tion to take truth on trust, an aptness for investigation, 
research, and discovery. They have furnished all the 
great inventors of the race, if we except those that must 
at some remote epoch have flourished among the Chinese 
and Japanese, from whom they differ in the vigorous 
and rapid progress of their art, while among the Eastern 
nations art is stationary, and its processes slow, conduct- 
ed with little aid from machinery, and with an indis- 
position to learn new and improved methods. But with 
the Caucasian races, the imagination follows in the wake 
of reason, intuition lags behind demonstration, and the 
affections, instead of giving law, are in subjection to the 
intellectual nature. 

The Asiatic mind is easily swayed by impressions from 
without, in close sympathy with nature, keenly sensitive 
to its beauties and its harmonies, full of gorgeous fancies, 
rich in poetic elements, kaleidoscopic in the profusion, 
variety, and splendor of its imaginative literature. But 
it is slow to reason, it has neither prudence nor persist- 
ency in counsel, and its affections are subordinated to 
the imagination. 

The African races, with all their depression, still show 
in some directions superior capacity. Docility, obedi- 
ence, and love are their native traits, — traits not devel- 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 137 

oped by their long servitude, but essential to render their 
enslavement possible ; for the experiment of enslaving 
other races has been repeatedly tried, but has never per- 
manently succeeded. The Africans often submit to their 
bondage, with full consciousness of their wrongs and of 
their power to resent them, by virtue of a moral instinct 
averse from violence, and willing to endure oppression 
rather than to avenge it. Whatever culture they receive 
goes at once to the affections, — takes a moral and 
religious direction. To educate them is, with rare ex- 
ceptions, to make them devout, grateful, kind, and 
exemplary in their social relations and duties. With 
the highest culture that they can attain, it is doubtful 
whether they will ever excel in science, art, or poetry, 
or will furnish any considerable proportion of command- 
ing, cogent minds. But there is every reason to believe 
that they may be so trained as to exhibit the richest 
traits of moral excellence, to be the ready recipients of 
the highest social influences, and to reflect the love, as 
other races reflect the wisdom and beauty, of the Cre- 
ator. 

The relations of these several races are now deranged, 
and their mutual correspondences obscured, by the pres- 
ence of moral evil. The Caucasian, in the pride of his 
strength, makes the Asiatic his tributary, the African his 
slave, and, in his insatiable lust for power and territory, is 
always ready to convert the earth into an Aceldama and 
a Golgotha. Thus reason and will usurp the suprem- 
acy over the gentler elements of character, and mutual 
alienation — contempt and fear, violence and wrong-suf- 
fering — prevents the nations from recognizing in one 
another the traits of the godlike which each might admire 
and copy in every other. But let the ages roll on, and, 



138 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

while science and skill weave their network of ever closer 
material communion and interest, let the gospel of broth- 
erhood clasp its zone around the nations, and put a period 
to war, slavery, and oppression, — then may not the dif- 
ferences of the races blend in the most perfect and beau- 
tiful harmony ? May not each from its peculiar vein 
contribute equally to the joint stock of elevating and 
refining influences ? May not each be at once the 
source and the recipient of sentiments and impulses, 
without which neither can fill its place and discharge 
its mission ? Will not reason own the transcendent love- 
liness of the affections, and they in their turn do homage 
to the majesty of reason, and fancy, while it breathes 
poetry into science and shapes the paradise of love, seek 
where it bestows, and draw truth and fervor from the 
very fountains into which it pours its own exuberant 
wealth of beauty ? Thus in coming ages will the whole 
human family combine to constitute the second Adam, 
myriad-formed, bearing every capacity and perfection 
that the first Adam might have developed had he re- 
mained sinless in Eden. Thus will the immeasurable 
Creator see the whole circle of his attributes reflected 
from the face of humanity with a resplendence infinitely 
brighter than can ever be mirrored in the material uni- 
verse, or has been beheld in the human form except in 
Him alone who in the form of man outrayed the bright- 
ness of the Father's glory. The development of these 
harmonies may be yet far distant ; but in the capacity 
for them which our race manifests in its present blind 
ness and perversion, in the tendency to them which we 
discern through all the darkness and misery that brood 
over the earth, we mark the tokens of a far-seeing prov- 
idence, which we can trace back through all the ages 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 139 

of authentic history, and thus, with undoubting faith, on 
through an ever-brightening future. 

From this broad view let us now pass to the distribu- 
tion of talents among persons of the same age and nation. 
Here it cannot be needful to defend the position, that 
the differences of ability are in great part native, not 
acquired ; — that genius and talent, so far from being 
the result of education or of favoring circumstances, will 
work their way through obstacles that seem insurmount- 
able, and will make any posture of circumstances pro- 
pitious to their own development ; while many persons 
who would gladly distinguish themselves in particular 
departments, who do all that they can do, and are 
helped by others so far as help can be made availing, 
hardly reach mediocrity. This diversity of natural gifts 
is so almost universally admitted, that any argument in 
its favor would seem lost labor. Taking it, then, for 
granted, we will proceed to consider the Divine prov- 
idence in their distribution. 

Writers on natural religion are wont to infer the wis- 
dom and goodness of the Creator from the distribution of 
land and water, of wood, salt, coal, and metals, in fine, 
of all the materials of man's outward well-being, in such 
a way that the relation of demand and supply can never 
suffer any serious derangement. The same relation of 
demand and supply prevails in man's native endowments 
and capacities. Talents are bestowed as they are needed 
and can be used, with that liberal frugality, that measured 
generosity, which enhances the value of all God's higher 
gifts, and attests the careful economy of the Giver. 

The only universal need is that of moral goodness ; 
and of this the capacity is universal, except in the rare 
case of mental disease ; while (as I shall show here- 



140 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

after) the humblest intellectual endowments do not 
preclude one even from eminence in goodness. For 
hand-labor and mechanical operations a very large sup- 
ply of human strength and skill is always needed, and, to 
meet this need, the great majority of men are so consti- 
tuted as to be fitted for such departments of industry, to 
find improvement and happiness in them, and, with other 
walks of life in full view, to be conscious neither of 
desire nor of adaptation for a different sphere. Then 
there is needed a certain proportion of men capable of 
conducting combined industry and extended enterprise, 
of directing the skill and employing the labor of others, 
and of distributing and exchanging the products of agri- 
culture and handcraft. It is a patent fact that these 
departments of business are sadly overcrowded ; but the 
multitude of those who cannot by any training be moulded 
into a capacity for them, and who flounder on through 
successive failures from a sanguine youth to a poverty- 
stricken old age, authorizes the belief that the Creator 
has fitted for these duties no more than the world needs. 
We verify the same law of distribution in social and 
political relations. Of minds capable of leading and 
controlling the action of other minds, bearing the signa- 
ture of native supremacy, endowed with the legitimate 
right and power of influence, there are enough, yet not 
more than enough, to serve as interpreters of truth and 
duty, counsellors, judges, magistrates, and legislators. 
Nor is this proportion essentially modified by the institu- 
tions of society. It is as large among savage as among 
civilized nations ; it furnishes the same relative quota of 
leaders and sages for the council-fire in the wigwam as 
for the senate or the parliament. Arbitrary forms of 
government do not diminish the number of these con- 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 141 

trolling minds, though, when crowded out of their ap- 
propriate spheres, they either, as in modern Germany, 
waste themselves in fruitless activity, becoming poets 
without inspiration, authors without taste or tact, super- 
numeraries in departments of literature and research that 
demand a widely different order of intellect, or, as in 
Italy, they employ their genius in undermining the insti- 
tutions of which they are the natural conservators and 
administrators. Nor does a democratic regime, as it is 
sometimes idly asserted, multiply talents of this class ; 
but when offices outnumber the needs of the people, are 
created for party purposes, and sought for their spoils," for 
lack of fit candidates they must be filled by men desti- 
tute of the capacity to counsel, legislate, rule, or judge. 

To pass to the realm of literature and art, the poet is 
born, not made. If he could be made by mere endeavor 
or practice, there would be as many poets as readers ; for 
the habit of rhyming is contracted at some period by 
almost every person that can write, and is persisted in 
through life by very many. Yet of poets by birthright 
and the gift of God there are exceedingly few in any one 
generation, in some scarce any, though on the muster- 
roll of all ages and lands they constitute no mean array, 
and are sufficiently various and divergent in style and 
subject to meet every hue and grade of taste, and to fur- 
nish every description of demand. Were the poets still 
fewer, their works would be inaccessible to many capa- 
ble of enjoying them to the full, and some veins of true 
poetic sentiment would be overlooked, some tastes un- 
provided for. Were they more numerous, the fruits 
of their genius would be less precious, less enjoyed, 
less prized, and the world, flooded with true poetry, as 
now with its counterfeit, would lose the power of appre- 
ciation. 



142 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

Here I would have you remark the rigid, merciful, 
and beautiful parsimony which, in all the higher depart- 
ments of art and literature, governs the proportion be- 
tween power and taste, genius and susceptibility, — 
between those who create and those who can enjoy and 
appreciate. In these departments one can minister to 
the pleasure and profit of hundreds, thousands, com- 
munities, nations ; and, accordingly, to one capable of 
thus, ministering, there are multitudes that can avail 
themselves of his ministry. Of all the higher forms of 
art, the most common is oratory, — that is, the capacity 
of -kindling, swaying, convincing, persuading, gladdening 
gathered crowds by the vivid presentation,. in word and 
gesture, of thoughts and sentiments capable of powerfully 
interesting and moving the judgment and the emotional 
nature. This gift is sufficiently common to bring all 
occasionally within the sphere of its exercise, yet suf- 
ficiently rare to make that exercise an uncloying and 
unwearying joy to the hearers. But of true orators a 
large proportion succeed by virtue of endowments eva- 
nescent in their nature, and have not the higher power 
of clothing their burning thoughts in words that can re- 
tain their prestige beyond reach of the living voice ; for 
authors are much fewer than orators. The capacity of 
successful authorship, immeasurably rarer than the en- 
deavor, is yet frequent enough for the needs of the read- 
ing public, even were education universal ; but among 
those who can read with discrimination, pleasure, and 
profit the records of fancy, wit, or wisdom, there is not 
one in ten thousand whom any possible training could 
have made the writer of books that would live and last. 
In the plastic arts, of artists worthy of the name, or of 
those who by any possibility could have become such, 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 143 

there are very few. Were there more, their creations 
would cease to be valued and to give pleasure. There 
are enough, and no more than enough, to minister to the 
of the thousands and millions who can be glad- 
dened, improved, refined, and elevated by their works. 
Of musical composers, actual and potential, there are 
enough, yet not more than enough, to furnish compass 
and variety for the incessant demand made for social, 
festive, and religious uses. Skilful musical performers, 
also, are to be everywhere found in sufficient number 
for the solace, delight, and edification of all wdio rejoice 
in the concord of sweet sounds. Yet the most diligent 
use of the Pestalozzian system, the most assiduous drill- 
ing of the infant ear and voice, falls far short of develop- 
ing the predicted universality of musical talent, which we 
might well deprecate — had not a kind Providence set 
up impassable barriers against it — as rendering the art 
cheap, paltry, and worthless. Let training-schools of 
music be established in every hamlet, let musical instruc- 
tion be proffered to every pupil in all our seminaries of 
learning, from the Kindergarten to the college, let a piano 
find shelter under every roof, — still the proportion of 
those who can yield delight by musical performance to 
those who can enjoy, and in some good measure appre- 
ciate, the achievements of musical skill and genius, must 
ever remain small. 

In the distribution of natural endowments which 1 
have now exhibited there are several points worthy of 
emphatic consideration. 1. The higher tastes, the intel- 
lectual demands, of the vast majority of mankind are fully 
met without their being taken from the walks of produc- 
tive industry. They can enjoy all the pleasure and all 
the mental emolument of art, literature, and poetry, 



144 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

through labor, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice in which 
they have borne no part. 2. The classes of talent which 
are developed the most slowly and laboriously are distrib- 
uted the most sparingly, and are at the same time en- 
dowed with an extent of influence commensurate with 
the outlay of time and effort in their cultivation. 3. In 
proportion to the difficulties to be overcome, the toil to 
be performed, the sacrifice to be borne, in the cultivation 
of any class of talents, is its power of self-diffusion in space 
and time. Thus the poet or the artist of the highest 
type, made what he is only by stern self-denial and rigid 
self-discipline, gives his name to his age, transmits his 
memory to all succeeding centuries, and is compensated 
for toil and straitness by the assurance that his works will 
live in distant generations, and that his genius will be 
recognized and felt throughout the civilized world. 

Does not the distribution of natural endowments, thus 
symmetrical and mutually self-compensating, manifest a 
presiding Providence, if possible, even more fully than 
analogous arrangements in the outward creation ? We 
here see that the principle of the division of labor, which 
has been represented as the great industrial device of 
modern times, by which alone skill can be perfected and 
its highest productiveness insured, is distinctly recognized 
by the Supreme Being in the order and economy of the 
creation, so that in this regard man is but copying the 
Divine precedent and pattern. You will remember that 
in my last Lecture I showed you how the highest art 
constantly resolves itself into the imitation of the Creator. 
The case is precisely the same in social and political 
economy, which, when not false and mischievous, is little 
else than the application — often unconscious — to par- 
ticular communities and organizations of the methods of 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 145 

the Divine providence, so that we might reverently em- 
ploy concerning whatever is wise and salutary in the 
institutions of all God's human children the words in 
which Jesus characterizes his miracles : " The Son can 
do nothing of himself, but what herseeth the Father do." 

But while as an economical arrangement tins distribu- 
tion of talents satisfies the taste and judgment, certainly 
of those who account themselves as among the more 
favored, it needs to be further illustrated, and even claims 
defence, in the case of those who occupy what is deemed 
the lowest place in the scale of Divine allotments. In a 
former Lecture I considered the condition of those desti- 
tute of moral and religious privilege ; I now ask you to 
look with me at the case of those who, in the established 
order of civilized society, would be termed unprivileged, 
— the laborers, the proletaries, the many who seem 
doomed to incessant toil and burden for the luxury of 
the few. If they are by virtue of their occupation shut 
out from the benefits and blessings which should apper- 
tain to them as intellectual and moral beings, if they are 
of necessity devoid of privilege, then, though the plan 
of the Divine administration which we have been review- 
ing may illustrate the wisdom, it throws doubt on the 
love, of the Creator. But if we find that they are ad- 
equately cared for, the argument for a Providence no less 
merciful than wise remains untouched. Let us try this 
issue. 

In the first place, labor is not of necessity unfavorable 
to mental or moral development. Even in its most com- 
plex forms it easily becomes so much a matter of routine 
as to leave the thoughts free. The mind can in the 
humblest sphere find ample materials for reflection and 



146 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

means of improvement, while the kindly and devouc 
affections may be cherished, and all the essential duties 
of the soul's life discharged, in a position however obscure 
and toilsome. Vigorous minds, distinctly cognizant of 
everything within their natural range of knowledge, are 
as often and as symmetrically formed in the laborious 
walks of life, as in those styled peculiarly intellectual. 
Both in England and in America, many have passed from 
the last and the loom to conspicuous places in literature 
and in public life, by virtue of mental acumen and vigor 
largely developed before they stinted the full measure of 
their daily labor. And how many there are, that never 
leave the work-bench or the plough, who are shrewd, 
sagacious, endowed with sterling good-sense, possessed 
of large practical wisdom, skilful in judging of character, 
weighing arguments, and testing evidence ! How many 
too, who have manifested the loftiest moral traits, and 
from whose stores of ethical and religious knowledge 
Socrates and Plato would have deemed themselves privi- 
leged learners ! What greater man, in that wisdom which 
adapts means to ends, in that saintly wisdom which adapts 
the choicest means to the noblest ends, has the present 
century seen, than John Pounds, the cobbler ? He 
entered on his life of unceasing toil with much less than 
a New England common-school education. He never 
learned to make a shoe, and in his nearly fourscore years 
he performed as large an amount of minute and grovel- 
ling task-work as any man in Great Britain. Yet he 
found time and mind and heart to rescue from ruin, and 
to raise to his own humble level in social life, and toward 
his own exalted rank in the moral hierarchy, several 
hundreds of orphaned and neglected children about the 
lanes and wharves of his native city, and to win for 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 147 

himself an enduring name among the first philanthropists 
in the world's annals. 

The mention of John Pounds reminds me of the frater- 
nity of St. Crispin, in both hemispheres, which has almost 
vindicated for itself a place among the liberal professions 
by its high grade of general intelligence, and by the num- 
ber of eminent men who have issued from its ranks, from 
Hans Sachs, whose lyrics were among the great forces of 
the Protestant Reformation, to our own Whittier, whose 
place in the foremost rank of living poets none can chal- 
lenge. • Who work harder than the shoemakers of Mas- 
si ichusetts ? Yet in what class of men is there more 
general activity of intellect, not to speak of the numerous 
instances in which the irrepressible force of genius has 
elevated members of their brotherhood to the highest 
eminence at the bar, in the pulpit, in the counsels of 
the State and nation ? Surely labor is not unprivileged. 

But though a life of incessant labor does not preclude 
the education of the higher nature, it is beginning to be 
admitted on all hands that neither does the order of Prov- 
idence require, nor can the general welfare permit, such a 
life to be the destiny of any portion of our race. Man is 
overworked as regards the needs of humanity. Excessive 
production is the most fruitful source of commercial con- 
vulsions, financial derangements, and of penury and star- 
vation among the laboring classes. But reserving this 
point for future discussion, and supposing that all the work 
that is done is needed, it is performed by much fewer 
laborers than ought to be engaged in it. Vast numbers 
properly belonging to the ranks of productive industry 
forsake them, or are forced out of them, and if they re- 
mained, they would greatly diminish the amount of toil 
per capita. There are multitudes constantly pressing into 



148 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

commercial life, without talent or education for business, 
with no possibility of success, without even elbow-room in 
the crowd of competitors. Then there are the wasteful 
armies and navies of the Old World and the New, — 
generally worse than useless, 1 — converting their myriads 
of potential producers into unproductive consumers. 

Consider also how large a proportion of the products of 
the earth is perverted from nourishment into poison. An 
immense percentage of the sugar and grain crops goes 
into market only in the form of alcoholic liquors, which 
in small part are made availing for medicinal and indus- 
trial uses, but for the most part are worse than wasted, 
and are the most potent of all agencies in reducing the 
working force of humanity. 

With these allowances for laborers abstracted and labor 
wasted, the handcraft of Christendom, when in fall em- 
ploy, gluts every market, and heaps up masses of com- 
modities of every kind in the hands of dealers. Then 
prices fall ruinously low, manufactories suspend opera- 
tions, farmers till less land, laborers are thrown out of 
employment by the thousand, and industry suffers a 
paralysis, till the supply is reduced, and a fresh demand 
raises prices and stimulates enterprise anew. All this 
indicates that, with the industrial machinery in full opera- 
tion, more work is done than man needs to have done. 

1 The writer will not of course be understood as applying the epithet " worse 
than useless" to the forces now or at any time employed in protecting the 
fundamental law and the essential institutions of the state, in guarding its 
frontiers from actual peril, or in preventing depredations upon its commerce 
on the seas. But in time of peace, a very large portion of the military and 
naval force in commission and pay in the various countries of Christendom 
not only serves no immediate purpose of defence or protection, but is not even 
in readiness for such service, an army or navy at the commencement of a war 
always evincing full as much need of being purged of inefficient officers and 
men, as of new enlistments. 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 149 

If, when men work twelve or fourteen hours a day, a 
large proportion of the laborers must he idle one year 
out of every four or five, to keep the supply of the com- 
modities within reach of the demand, the same end would 
be more conveniently brought about by their working but 
nine or ten hours a day, and having constant employment. 
Nor could the laborer lose, nay, he would rather gain, in 
wages by the general shortening of his day's work. His 
wages are not governed by the value he creates ; for labor 
creates all value, pays all income and revenue. Every 
dollar of the millionnaire's dividends is ploughed for, and 
delved for, and hammered for. The entire capital of the 
community, in order to be productive, must pass through 
the various channels of handcraft. The laborer's share 
of what he earns depends, on the one hand, on his own 
intelligence, self-respect, moral worth, and appreciation 
of the comforts and refinements of civilized life, and, on 
the other hand, on his employer's sense of justice. If he 
toil unremittingly, and have no space for the culture of 
the higher traits of mind and character, he will be com- 
pensated on the lowest scale of his absolute necessity; 
for he will be too ignorant, thriftless, and reckless to claim 
more, and he will not command sufficient respect to have 
more awarded to him. But if by a less amount of toil he 
yet produce his fair quota toward a supply of the. wants 
of the community, he can, by the cultivation of mind and 
heart, place himself on the same moral level with his em- 
ployer, — his demands will rise with his conscious needs, 
his wages will grow with the growth of his substantial 
claims to respect and deference, and he will be allowed 
his just dividend of the annual revenue of his labor ; while 
the enterprise that employs, the skill that directs, and the 
capital that sustains his industry will receive their equita- 
ble proportion, and no more. 



150 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

The working of this principle has been tested by the 
general establishment of the ten-hour system in some 
departments of industry. The operatives in these de- 
partments are better paid than before; employers have 
felt no injustice; and in the increased intelligence and 
respectability of the employed, and in the diminished 
tendency to overworking at some periods, and to a con- 
sequent glut of the labor-market at frequent intervals, 
the relations of capital and industry, and of demand and 
supply, have become more stable, and approached a more 
equable adjustment. The operation of this same principle 
must soon extend itself to all departments of industry. 
It cannot be hastened by agitation or by factious combi- 
nation, which only excites resistance and arrays public 
opinion on the wrong side. It will gradually establish 
itself with the recognition of sound views of social econ- 
omy, of the republican doctrine of equal rights, and of 
mutual justice between man and man. The time cannot 
be far distant when, in New England at least, the disas- 
trous system of overworking and overproduction will be 
permanently set aside, and the hours and amount of regu- 
lar labor will be so adjusted to the actual needs of home 
and foreign markets, as to prevent the spasms of con- 
suming toil and intervals of hungry idleness which have 
hitherto alternated in the history of the industrial world. 

We are at present concerned with the fundamental 
laws of the Divine Providence, not with artificial ar- 
rangements in contravention of those laws. I have 
shown you that one of those laws is, that much less 
than the incessant toil of the laboring classes will pro- 
duce all that man requires for subsistence, comfort, and 
luxury. Consequently, Providence has indicated for the 
laborer ample season for relaxation and improvement. 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 151 

In a state of society conformed to its essential laws, no 
day would pass for any member of the community in ex- 
hausting toil, — every day would have its leisure hours 
for domestic enjoyment, for the culture of the mental 
powers, and for the indulgence of refined tastes. Thus, 
by the universal diffusion of the elevating influences of 
leisure and prosperity, the artificial distinctions of society 
would fall away; all occupations would become liberal 
professions; the man in every case would ennoble his 
calling and reflect honor upon it; and all the essential 
offices of life would be discharged without menial or 
degrading associations attaching themselves to any, be- 
cause he who performed even the humblest function, 
instead of being wholly merged in it, would have exist- 
ence and time, a status, an intellectual, moral, and social 
life, independent of it. 

In even pace with this tendency toward a high gen- 
eral level of social life, the civilized world must approach 
nearer an equal distribution of material wealth. Not only 
will capital earn less and labor more, but with the general 
diffusion of intelligence and the enhanced compensation 
of labor the number of small capitalists will be constantly 
on the increase, and the union of capital and labor will 
become general. To be sure, there must always be con- 
siderable accumulations of capital. They are demanded 
for the general good, as safety-funds and movement-funds. 
The surface of society must always be diversified. But 
there is no need of Alpine scenery, — riches piled moun- 
tain high, with sunless and barren ravines in the chasms. 
Far better is it that hill and valley should alike he un- 
der the common sunlight, and equally wave with harvest 
wealth. 

There is yet one point more with reference to the 



152 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

elevation of labor, which I want to illustrate. I ex- 
hibited to you in my last Lecture the Divine Providence 
in Art. Of this providence the chief revenue accrues to 
the laborer. Invention, machinery, steam, magnetism, 
all are especially for his emolument. Without them, the 
heirs of great names and ancestral acres would live in 
rude plenty and barbaric splendor, would lack nothing 
which they could appreciate, and by their monopoly of 
land — the only source of wealth — would keep the 
laboring classes in a dependent and needy serfdom. 
But machinery creates a wealth that cannot be monop- 
olized. A labor-saving invention confers a- permanent 
estate or settles an annual revenue on each of the 
laborers of the country where it is used, and even of 
the civilized world. Take, for instance, an invention by 
which two men can do the work which ten used to do, 
and suppose it applied to a department of labor in which 
ten thousand men have been employed. It is manifest 
that the labor of eight thousand men can be dispensed 
with, and the amount of production remain the same as 
before. Now if these eight thousand men were dismissed 
summarily from employment, the result would be a bur- 
den, and not a blessing, to the community. But this is 
not the case. In all probability they will remain in the 
business, and aid in producing five times as much of the 
commodity as was produced before; for, by dispensing 
with four fifths of the labor, the commodity is cheapened 
to two thirds, one half, or even one third of its former 
price, and consequently many can afford to use it who 
never used it before, and many with whom it was before 
a luxury or a rarity can now make free and common use 
of it. Thus the products of the labor of these eight 
thousand men, being four times as much of the com- 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 153 

modity in question as was previously manufactured, are 
thrown into the cheap market, chiefly for the benefit of 
the laboring classes, — of men who must wait till a com- 
modity is cheap, in order to purchase it freely, if at all. 
If it be cotton cloth or calico, they can dress their families 
with a neatness and comfort not before attainable. If it 
be glass or porcelain, they can gratify their taste in their 
table furniture. If it be paper, they can indulge them- 
selves and their children with an occasional new book or 
a daily journal. If it be an article not unproductively 
consumed, but used for the production of other goods, 
they derive the same; advantage in the cheaper rate at 
which those goods are procured. If the commodity be 
one adapted to general use, probably not only the eight 
thousand will remain in the manufacture, but the demand 
will grow so fast as to create a considerable indraft from 
the labor-market at large, and thus to enhance in some 
measure the average rate of wages. And let it be borne 
in mind that the increased consumption is, almost all of it, 
by the poorer classes, — by the laborers. Rich men used 
as much as they wanted of the commodity thus multiplied, 
at the higher prices ; the invention benefits those who 
could not previously afford to purchase it. 

I have said that in this supposed case the labor of the 
eight thousand men is a gift of Providence to the laboring 
portion of the community. But there are two forms in 
which they may take the gift. They may take it in goods, 
as I have already shown you, or they may take it in time, 
by the absorption of the disengaged eight thousand into 
the general mass of laborers, the same amount of produc- 
tion being accomplished as before, but by fewer hours of 
labor on the part of each operative of every class. The 
gift has in fact been accepted in both forms ; thus far, how- 
7* 



154 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

ever, principally in the former, while in coming genera- 
tions it will no doubt be oftener welcomed in the latter. 
It has been hitherto taken chiefly in goods, because so 
many desirable articles of comfort and enjoyment have 
been made easily accessible and temptingly cheap. The 
advance in the condition of the laboring classes within half 
a century is almost fabulous. The man who unites indus- 
try with a moderate degree of skill lacks hardly anything 
that could make him happier. As to the essentials of 
comfort, the levelling upward, except among the indolent, 
thriftless, and vicious, has reached a higher grade than 
Utopians would have dreamed two or three generations 
ago. And now that laborers have received, in goods, 
nearly as much of the revenue which comes to them from 
machinery as they desire to receive in that form, they are 
turning their attention to the matter of time, and claim- 
ing a part of their dividend in hours, — in leisure to enjoy 
the homes that have been made so comfortable, the added 
measure of goods that has fallen to their inheritance. In- 
vention and machinery, having been first made efficient 
in multiplying comforts and luxuries, will now go on to 
accomplish their mission in emancipating the laborer from 
continuous toil, by enabling the laboring force of the 
world to do all the world's work within hours that shall 
impose no heavy burden or depressing weariness, and 
shall leave the paths of higher culture and superior privi- 
lege as freely open to those who are distinctively workers, 
as to those who dignify their fives by the name of some 
liberal profession. 

I have thus shown you, with reference to those who, in 
our social system, seem to have the least of privilege, — 
first, that, in the order of Providence, the time spent in 
labor is not lost to higher purposes ; secondly, that more 



THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN SOCIETY. 155 

work is now done, when industrial agencies are in fall 
operation, than the race needs ; and, thirdly, that, in the 
progress of inventive art, there is ample provision for the 
material comfort, the abundant leisure, and the high men- 
tal, moral, and spiritual culture of the laborers, — all 
which, be it remembered, is not the growth of man's 
philanthropy (for man has done next to nothing on a 
large scale for his fellow-man), but the development of 
the counsels of Him, of whom revelation tells us that his 
tender mercies are over all his works, and his loving- 
kindness unto all the children of men. 



LECTURE VIII. 

THE HOLINESS OF GOD. — GOD IN CHRIST- 

In a previous Lecture I named goodness and holiness 
as the two principal aspects of the Divine character pre- 
sented by Christianity. I have thus far spoken of the 
first of these only, as confirmed and illustrated by the 
religion of nature. I now ask your attention to the sec- 
ond, which will occupy the earlier portion of the present 
hour. 

Holiness primarily denotes wholeness, and, as applied to 
character, it indicates perfect purity, any lack of purity 
being a defect, and thus detracting from the wholeness of 
character. The natural and necessary manifestation of 
holiness in God is a supreme reference to moral distinc- 
tions in the structure and government of the universe. 
Let us see how far it is so manifested as to claim for it a 
place among the truths of natural religion. 

I. It is manifested in the human conscience. What is 
conscience ? It is the internal perception corresponding 
to the word ought, which denotes owed or olligated. And 
why ought I to do this or that ? Because it is intrinsi- 
cally right, in accordance with the nature of things, in 
harmony with an eternal law which I can neither set 
aside nor evade. This sense of obligation, with the cor- 
relative sense of right, is native, intuitive. It exists in 
the very dawn of the moral nature. We cannot re- 
member the time when we had it not. We trace it in 



THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 157 

the infant as early as we can trace anything beyond sen- 
sation. It is not the result of education, but the basis of 
education. The parent does not awaken it, but appeals 
to it in the earliest forms and acts of moral discipline. It 
can no more be expelled or escaped from, than can the 
consciousness of existence. 

Conscience is unerring. The conviction I ought is 
never felt with reference to anything but that which is 
intrinsically, necessarily, eternally right. There are, in- 
deed, many cases of conscientious wrong-doing ; but how ? 
Not through a perverted sense of right, but through im- 
perfect knowledge or defective judgment as to the proper 
means of actualizing the sense of right. In conscientious 
wrong-doing the animus of the act is right ; the thing 
done is what in the abstract ought to be done ; there is 
merely a mistake as to the method in which the honest, 
benevolent, or devout purpose may be fitly carried into 
effect, that is, a mistake, not as to one's own obligation, 
but as to beings, objects, and relations external to him- 
self. Thus the conscientious persecutor of those whom 
he deems heretics is right in believing that he ought to 
sacrifice every inferior consideration to the reverence and 
worship of God ; wrong only in supposing that the prop- 
erty, liberty, and lives of his fellow-citizens are his for 
the purpose of sacrifice. Thus, also, the absurdities and 
extravagances of fanaticism are expressions of that loy- 
alty to God in which all moral good has its source and its 
end ; the mistake is solely one of taste and judgment, as 
to the exterior becomingness and utility of certain modes 
of expressing the loyalty of the heart, — modes in them- 
selves innocent, and which would be as becoming and 
useful as any other modes, were they not inconsistent 
with conventional propriety. Conscience never sanctions 



158 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

a wrong disposition, motive, or feeling ; but its province 
lies wholly within, — the mode in which it shall embody 
itself is a subject for legislation, human or Divine. When 
the law prescribes only outward acts in themselves right 
or indifferent, conscience takes the law as she finds it. 
But when legislation lays sacrilegious hands on the ark 
of God hi the soul, invades the realm of conscience, com- 
mands what she forbids, or forbids what she commands, 
the law is paralyzed before the divine majesty of right. 
It may make submissive martyrs, whose blood shall cry 
out of the ground for its repeal ; but it can no more de- 
pose conscience from her judgment-seat than it can usurp 
the throne of the universe. 

I have said that the office of conscience is involved in 
the word ought, — owed. But the ought must have its ob- 
ject. It implies a double personality, — the person owing, 
and the person to whom the obligation is due. It has not 
a merely human reference ; for it adheres to portions of 
our lives in which we can have no human creditor, in 
which our fellow-beings have no interest, — to thoughts 
and feelings which they cannot even know. When I say 
J ought, I confess myself amenable to God; I acknowl- 
edge that I owe to him thoughts, words, and deeds con- 
formed to his will, deserving his approval, nay, more, 
accordant with his nature ; for his will must be the ex- 
pression of his nature, and if he wills purity, truth, and 
love, it must be because he is stainlessly pure, eternally 
true, infinitely good. 

Still further, conscience is not only the reflection of the 
Divine nature, — it is, not in metaphor, but in literal fact, 
the God within. Man constantly errs ; conscience is in- 
fallible. Man changes from youth to age, from genera- 
tion to generation ; conscience is unchangeable. Man is 



THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 159 

tempted ; conscience knows no bribe. Man may make 
himself utterly vile ; but in the entire wreck and ruin of 
his nature conscience is as loyal to the right in plying its 
scourge of scorpions, as when it echoes the plaudit of a 
justifying God on a life nobly spent or nobly sacrificed. 

God is everywhere. He is present in inanimate nature 
in those laws which are his unceasing fiat. He is present 
with the brute creation in instinct, through whose impulse 
the unreasoning races fulfil his bidding. He is present 
with men in conscience. And as without his presence in 
nature the forms of the visible creation would collapse 
and perish ; as without his presence in instinct the tribes 
of air, land, and sea would rush to ruin ; so without his 
presence in conscience the bonds of society would be 
sundered, government would be impossible, natural affec- 
tion would be turned to hatred, and our whole race would 
be blended in a tumultuous warfare of mutual destruc- 
tion. 

In saying this, I am aware that I ascribe to conscience 
a degree of influence over society as it now is, which is 
not generally recognized. But with all the wrong-doing 
that there is among men, the overwhelming majority of 
the individual acts performed in the world are not only 
right and good, but strictly conscientious acts ; and even 
the very worst men are generally conscientious, except as 
to those particulars of conduct in which their ruling appe- 
tite or passion is immediately concerned. Go as low as you 
will in the scale of moral turpitude, you still do not find 
utter indifference to moral distinctions. I doubt whether 
there lives a sane man who, when selfish motives are 
equally balanced between the right and the wrong, would 
not choose the right, though he might not know why, — 
by an inward movement closely analogous to that which 



160 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

* leads the brute to elect wholesome and to shun unwhole- 
some food. It is on the ground of this innate and never 
inactive sense of right that, if you know a bad man, you 
may calculate the veins in which his vicious propensities 
will run, and can generally trust him in every other di- 
rection. 

In fine, a large proportion of the trust which we think 
we repose in one another, is not trust in man, but trust hi 
God as he is present with man in the indestructible con- 
science. The man who would rob you if he met you in 
a secluded spot, is more likely than not to show you 
gratuitous kindness, if the opportunity of gratifying his 
cupidity be wanting. You are on a perplexing journey, 
and, without thought of his moral condition, you confi- 
dently ask information of the first man you meet. He 
may be a person of the most depraved character, yet, if 
he has no motive for misleading you, you know that you 
can depend on what he tells you. You are ill among 
strangers, and very probably you will have for your un- 
asked and most assiduous attendants and helpers persons 
who in certain ways are the slaves of evil appetites or 
passions. In truth, men never sin untempted, and they 
generally do right and good when there is no selfish mo- 
tive to evil. 

Nay, more. You often witness great virtues in connec- 
tion with gross defects and faults, — sincere patriotism 
where the private morality bears a low stamp, private ex- 
cellence combined with political profligacy, honesty in the 
sensualist, benevolence among the intemperate, domestic 
fidelity among those whose uprightness in business rela- 
tions you cannot trust. To be sure, the character which 
in any one respect is faulty is weaker at other points than 
if it were without stain, — is more liable to yield to new 



THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 161 

forms of temptation ; yet, under ordinary circumstances, 
a man who is, in the common phrase, destitute of prin- 
ciple, may be relied on for the continued performance of 
the good which he has been accustomed to do, no less than 
he may be expected still to yield, whenever occasion pre- 
sents itself, to his easily-besetting frailties and sins. And 
thus, as I have said, the overwhelming majority of the 
acts performed are right and good, salutary and helpful. 

But here let me make a most emphatic distinction. I 
cannot regard this spontaneous goodness as worthy of 
moral approbation, which he alone deserves who can resist 
temptation and resolutely choose the right, when there 
are strong motives arrayed on the opposite side ; who can 
say with the Hebrew patriarch, " Till I die, I will not 
remove my integrity from me." But the spontaneous 
activity of conscience, where there is no distinct exercise 
of moral choice, takes place under the operation of a 
Divine law analogous to the all-embracing laws of the 
material universe. The vast amount of practical goodness 
that coexists with non-religion, irreligion, and specific 
forms of vice, should be regarded in the same light in 
which we view the order and harmony of nature, not 
with praise to the creature, but with adoration to the Cre- 
ator, Sustainer, and Preserver. It is the mode in which 
He holds the race together, that successive generations 
may have the opportunity of moral choice, that the reign 
of true virtue may be progressively established, that indi- 
vidual excellence may be multiplied and augmented from 
age to age, and that in the yet distant era of universal 
righteousness the earth may be inhabited by those who 
shall do right, with the free purpose and full energy of 
mind, heart, and soul. 

As regards the subject now in hand, conscience, in its 

K 



162 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

rectitude, purity, and holiness, is our witness of the recti- 
tude, purity, and holiness of Him who thus maintains 
his presence with our race, and builds the shrine of his 
indwelling in every soul of man. 

II. The Divine holiness is, secondly, manifested in the 
structure and the course of the outward universe, so far as 
they favor and execute the laws of right which conscience 
recognizes. It was said by the Psalmist, " The saints 
shall inherit the earth," and he need not have used the 
future ; the saints do inherit it, reap its revenue, enjoy 
its benefits. Leaving the life to come out of the account, 
the good man, however contracted his nominal possessions 
may be, makes more and gets more out of this world than 
any amplitude of wealth or loftiness of station can give 
the bad man. From the minimum of outward means of 
enjoyment he extracts the maximum of enjoyment. 

All vice, all sin, is suicidal. Sensuality in every form 
detracts even from the sum of merely physical gratifica- 
tion. At the outset of a course of sensual indulgence 
the pleasure is intense ; but at a very early period the 
capacity of enjoyment wanes, and then utterly ceases, 
while the morbid craving grows, even under the con- 
sciousness of added misery, with every new gratification. 
I have repeatedly interrogated the self-consciousness ot 
intemperate persons, reformed and unreformed, and I feel 
warranted in saying that all enjoyment from strong drink 
ceases before the stage of habitual drunkenness is reached, 
and that thenceforth, between the craving and the satisfy- 
ing of the tyrant appetite there is hardly a difference in 
the degree, but only an alternation in the form of suffer- 
ing. Human cruelty never invented torture to be com- 
pared with that which the sensualist incurs. His body 
becomes the soul's dungeon, — its walls constantly thick- 



THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 163 

ening and closing up so as to shut all the wonted entrances 
of joy. His senses, deadened on the side of pleasure, no 
longer avenues of beauty or harmony, or even of gratify- 
ing perfumes or flavors, are left still open inlets of pain. 

Equally fatal are all social vices to individual happiness. 
Fraud reacts on the deceiver. Avarice impoverishes the 
life faster than it increases the wealth. The resentful 
and malevolent passions can harm no one so much as him 
who harbors them. On the other hand, every generous 
affection and noble act enlarges the domain of being, 
enriches and gladdens the soul, and seldom fails to ren- 
der the outward condition more ample as to the means 
of happiness. 

In like manner, reverence and devotion, loyalty to the 
Dime will, the religious consecration of the life, in fine, 
all the traits and habits that belong to personal piety, are 
adapted to promote prosperity, honor, domestic peace, 
social consideration, and the enjoyment of the whole out- 
ward world ; while he who neglects or scorns his duty to 
God forfeits unnumbered consolations, blessings, and hopes, 
and incurs positive and unmixed suffering from experiences 
which to the religious man are means of inward growth 
and fountains of a purer joy than he knew before. 

The dependence of happiness on character is fully veri- 
fied in every lengthened life. Could you convene a senate 
of old men of every style of character, from the hoary 
profligate to the aged saint, and could each be compelled 
to declare the convictions which had been forced upon 
him by his life-experience, there would not be a shade of 
discrepancy in their testimony as to the dependence of 
what they had enjoyed or suffered on what they had been ; 
while their utterances would run through the whole dia- 
tonic scale, from the wailing minor key of the soul loathing 



164 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

the past and dreading the future, unfit to live and afraid 
to die, to the jubilant swan-note of him who looks back 
on a consecrated life, and reaches for the crown and palm 
and harp of his transfiguration. The proverbs of all 
nations, which are the condensed experience of mankind, 
are full of this truth. Earthly and earth-limited, — mere 
prudential maxims as they seem, — they almost all recog- 
nize the identity of happiness with right living, and urge 
motives of expediency in behalf of the very same virtues 
to which revelation annexes the hope full of immortality. 
Now if the world and the inevitable course of human 
life are so adjusted by the Supreme Providence as thus 
to favor goodness and to make the way of transgressors 
hard, it must needs be that He who created the world 
and who orders human affairs is himself the impersonation 
of the law embodied in his works and their administration, 
— the law of truth, purity, and love. Thus the holiness 
of God, affirmed by revelation, is verified equally by the 
human conscience and by the whole economy of nature 
and of life. 

Christianity not only declares the Divine goodness and 
holiness, which are verified, as we have seen, by the re- 
ligion of nature. It has for its central personage a being 
who professes to be more than a revealer of truth, — who 
claims to be received as standing in a peculiar relation to 
God and to humanity, as the Mediator between God and 
man, as the representative of the Divine person, as a fault- 
less model for the imitation of the race. Let us see what 
natural religion says to these claims. 

1. Is the mediatorial office which the Scriptures attribute 
to Jesus Christ intrinsically probable ? Here we encounter 
the prevalent naturalism of our time, which asks, proudly 



GOD IN CHRIST. 165 

and scornfully, " Why should I go to God through a me- 
diator, and not rather avail myself of a child's right to 
look directly into the Father's face, and cast myself, with- 
out pledge, promise, or intervention, upon his love?" 
By parity of reason we might say, " Why, when I want 
to feast my eyes on the varied landscape, the ocean, the 
distant hills, should I permit these intrusive sunbeams to 
gleam over the fields, play on the hillsides, and flash from 
the waves? Let me rather go abroad in the moonless 
and starless night, when there is nothing to intervene 
between my vision and the objects it would rest upon." 
Nothing, indeed, except dimness and distance. And 
there has never been anything but dimness and distance 
to obstruct the clear view of the Divine Being for the 
nations and the men that have not looked to him through 
Christ. From the very necessity of the case, the Divine 
presence, power, and love diffused through the universe 
cannot be converged on the mental retina of a new-born, 
limited, earth-bound mortal. A form in which those rays 
that stream from and over all nature are converged and 
made visible, in which love is pledged, pardon proffered, 
protection guaranteed, the Father's arms folded about his 
children, is an imperative demand of natural religion. 
For souls born of God must yearn to know him. Souls 
conscious of sin must crave forgiveness and reconciliation. 
Souls needy and dependent must long for express assur- 
ance, sensible manifestation of the Supreme Providence. 
This demand was urged by the greatest and wisest minds 
of Pagan antiquity, and was the subject of their undoubt- 
ing foresight no less than of Hebrew prophecy. In this 
sense Jesus the Mediator was the desire of all nations. 
2. This manifestation of God needed to be made in 
human form, and natural religion w r ould anticipate the 



166 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

manifestation in this form. We can conceive in God of 
no attributes of which we have not the capacity in our- 
selves. He may have other attributes; but if so, we 
cannot attain to the knowledge of them in this life, and 
can learn them in heaven only by the development of 
new powers in our own natures. As I have shown you 
in the earlier part of this course, miracles are adequate to 
reveal the Divine personality. God becomes known as a 
person by visibly detaching himself from his works and 
from the order of nature ; by presenting himself as a will 
and a power supreme over the impersonal forces of the 
universe ; by those acts of sovereignty in which, in the 
sublime language of Scripture, " He bowed the heavens 
and came down," — in which his voice was heard and his 
arm beheld by the astonished nations. Thus far the 
Hebrews — and they alone of all the ancients — had 
just conceptions of the Supreme Being. But their idea 
of God was imperfect, simply because it had not been 
derived from a perfect incarnation, — because perfect 
humanity had not been seem Their God was the Sover- 
eign,., but not the Universal Father. He was angry, and 
needed to be appeased by sacrifice. He was their friend, 
but not the friend of the whole race of man. He par- 
took of the narrowness and the unlovely passions of a 
bigoted, jealous, morose, and vindictive people. The 
imprecatory Psalms, while they represent the darker 
aspects of the characters of the best men among the 
posterity of Jacob, as truly represent the limitations of 
their knowledge of the Supreme Being, as the Psalms 
of lofty trust and praise exhibit, along with the profound 
and earnest piety of the writers, their just conceptions of 
all of the Divine nature that could be revealed without 
being incarnated. 



GOD IN CHRIST. 167 

But in Jesus we behold all contrasts of goodness com- 
bined and harmonized, — the strong and the tender, the 
Judge and the Father, holiness and gentleness, freedom 
from sin and sympathy with the sinner, — the traits which 
by themselves would constrain profound and awe-stricken 
reverence, and those which by themselves would draw 
out the intimacy and warmth of fraternal affection. In 
him righteousness and mercy, justice and love, are made 
one. We see in him not merely the massive elements 
of character, but equally the delicate tracery of senti- 
ment, the perfectness of spiritual beauty, — all that can 
bring him near to the common scenes of life, all that we 
gladly associate with an omnipresent witness and an 
unfailing friend. When through him as a medium of 
vision we look to God, while the Divine grandeur and 
glory are presented up to and beyond our power of con- 
ception, we at the same time learn to attach to the Au- 
thor of our being all that is lovely and beautiful in a 
perfect human being, all of humanity except its follies 
and its sins, all in which God's noblest creation can have 
been the embodied thought of the Creator. 

In point of fact, the largest, loftiest, most self-justifying 
conception of the Deity that has ever been attained by 
man is the Christian conception ; and this extends just so 
far as the individual thinker can take in the character of 
Christ, and no farther. Thus, were Christ now on earth, 
we could go to him for pardon, counsel, and help, without 
question or misgiving, as we would go to a father, were 
he no less able than willing to meet all our needs ; and 
just so far as Christ awakens in us tins sentiment of famil- 
iar trust, do we discern in his person, as we can through 
no other medium, how the Eternal Father clasps around 
the needy, the suffering, and the sinning the embrace of 



168 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

ineffable tenderness, — how for every want, in weariness 
and in grief, under the burden of one's own heart, in the 
intense agony of self-reproach, man's true recourse is to 
the bosom of everlasting love. 

Now the argument which I would urge is this; The 
views of the Divine character of which I have spoken, those 
which connect with God's infinite power, wisdom, and ma- 
jesty an equal perfectness in the tender, genial, amiable 
aspects of character, are exclusively Christian in their 
source. Even revelation does not give them, — they come 
from manifestation alone, from a theophany. If I may 
use the words in a sense in which they correspond not to 
a limiting dogma, but to universal Christian consciousness, 
they come from " God manifest in the flesh." But thus 
derived, they are, as I have said, self-justifying. Once 
suggested, they form the only conception of God which 
w^e can thenceforth deem tenable.- They commend them- 
selves as intrinsically probable. They are confirmed by 
our growing knowledge of nature. They are verified 
equally by our external experience, and by their benign 
efficacy in moulding our characters and governing our 
lives. Received from Christ, they become to us in the 
profoundest and most intimate sense natural, so that, were 
we forced to surrender them, nature would lose its iden- 
tity, and become unnatural. From all this the legitimate 
conclusion is, that the manifestation, the theophany, which 
thus shows us what God is, is itself natural, and was to 
have been anticipated. So far is it from standing in the 
contrast to natural religion in which even Christians have 
been wont to place it, that the religion of nature would 
be incomplete without it. 

3. I would next speak of Christ as the model for 
human virtue. The identity of Christianity with natural 



GOD IN CHRIST. * 169 

religion is seen in the unchanged and unchangeable 
beauty, lustre, and glory of its Founder's character. 
He is the only luminary in the moral universe which 
has no secular parallax, — which appears the same from 
century to century, the same by the refined and exalted 
standard of modern times that he did by the rude and 
gross standard of his own day. While he was upon 
earth, in a corrupt age and among a degenerate nation, 
it might seem no wonder that he moved like a very god 
among men. That the multitude strewed then' garments 
on his path ; that the officials of the High-Priest, when 
sent to arrest him, could not find it in their hearts to lay 
hands on him ; that the centurion who went to keep 
guard, as at the execution of a malefactor beneath con- 
tempt, exclaimed, " Surely this man was a son of God," 
— these might have seemed the not unnatural testimo- 
nials of spontaneous reverence to the power of superior 
excellence at a period when virtue was rare, and moral 
heroism was seldom, in its passive forms never, witnessed. 
But as from that low stand-point we ascend to the higher 
planes of human goodness, we find the admiration for him 
undiminished. None so revere him as they who are 
themselves the most worthy of reverence. None feel so 
humbled in comparison with him, as those who only gain 
lustre by comparison with the best beside him. 

May I not appeal to individual experience for the result 
of prolonged familiarity with his character ? Other his- 
torical personages we can study to excess, — we become 
weary of them, and they are belittled to our apprehen- 
sion. We can take in all that they were and all that 
they accomplished, — we can go round them and over 
them, and the greatest of them constitutes so small a 
portion of the world's greatness, and shapes so small a 
8 



170 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

portion of the world's history, that he becomes dwarfed 
in the very attempt to compass and comprehend his mag- 
nitude. The fame of some popular hero is often thus 
injuriously affected by our having read and heard too 
much about him, though it be all to his praise. But who 
gets tired of Christ, or feels that he has exhausted His 
fulness ? He occupies the lowest place with those who 
know him least. He grows upon our study. New lines 
and hues of spiritual beauty reveal themselves with every 
fresh perusal of the evangelic record ; there is new mean- 
ing in his acts, new force in his words. On intimate 
conversance with his life, indifference passes into respect, 
respect deepens into reverence, reverence glows into 
adoration. More and more does the human become 
divine, as we behold the glory of God in the face of 
Jesus Christ. None look so lovingly into his counte- 
nance as those whose wonted place is with John on the 
bosom of their Lord. We can conceive of no change in 
the picture which would not be for the worse. There is 
no defect, no excess, no redundancy. 

But if in the moral character of Jesus there is nothing 
that belongs peculiarly to his age or nation, nothing con- 
ventional, nothing transient or capable of being outgrown, 
in fine, if it is wholly unaffected by the time and space 
element, then that character must be, not by hyperbole, 
but literally, divine, — and if divine, then natural, — de- 
rived from and conformed to that nature which is abso- 
lute, unchangeable goodness and holiness. In revering 
and following Christ, we are rendering honor to God and 
imitating him, and the religion which consists in this is 
pre-eminently natural ; for what can be so natural as 
for the creature to honor the Creator, — for the intelli- 
gent and self-determining creature to imitate Him from 



GOD IN CHRIST. 171 

wliom he derived the power of thought, will, and choice ? 
In the light in which I have now presented Christ as an 
exemplar of human goodness, (though I by no means 
deny the more strictly dogmatic sense commonly attached 
to such phraseology,) Christ w r as before Abraham, before 
the worlds ; he manifested that which was truth and 
right in the beginning, absolute goodness, eternal recti- 
tude : and the religion based on his life belongs to the 
organism of the spiritual universe, and is therefore, hi the 
strictest and most intimate sense, the religion of nature. 

As the Mediator, as the image of God, as the model of 
perfect humanity, we have thus seen that Christ, standing 
though he does alone in history, heralded by prophecy, 
authenticated by miracle, is still a natural personage, — 
a being whose advent might have been anticipated on 
grounds connected with the nature of God and of man. 
We may, I think, go still further, and inquire, without 
irreverence, under what outward circumstances it was 
antecedently probable that such a manifestation would 
be made, 

1. We might, in the first place, expect that the birth 
and parentage of this personage would be exempted from 
all intrinsically or reputedly mean and vulgar associations, 
— from all that would of necessity make him the object 
of contempt and scorn. How far was this condition ful- 
filled in Jesus ? His reputed parents, though poor, were 
not paupers. Though they were in humble condition, all 
the notices we have of them authorize the assertion that 
they and their kindred and associates were respectable 
and respected, industrious, intelligent, and virtuous, bear- 
ing no brand that w r ould exclude them from favored rec- 
ognition in so democratic a state of society as then pre- 



172 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

vailed in Judaea. The legal necessity of their going from 
Nazareth to Bethlehem for registration shows that they 
were not mere proletaries, but that they were possessed 
of some slender freehold in the latter of these cities, 
while the tradition runs that they owned a house in the 
former. Their descent from the ancient royal line, though 
so remote, and shared by so many, as to create no aristo- 
cratic prestige, yet enhanced their self-respect, and gave 
them a certain degree of social consideration. 

2. In the next place, it was equally fitting that the 
being who was to stand in this official relation between 
God and man should have none of the ordinary claims to 
distinction and eminence. Wealth, rank, place, or title, 
so far as it had any prominence in his condition, would 
tend to diminish the lustre of his character. Heaven's 
purest gems need no setting, and shine brightest when 
they shine alone. He who is to draw all men to himself 
by the beauty and majesty of his spirit, should have noth- 
ing in his surroundings which will bring to him a spurious 
homage, an interested clientship, adherents to his earthly 
fortunes and not to his supra-mundane sovereignty. Even 
Jesus, in his want and careful abnegation of all that ordi- 
narily draws parasites, was at one time harassed by men 
who sought him because they had been fed by him in 
the desert. How constantly and annoyingly would this 
experience have been repeated, had he had a mansion and 
a table of his own ! The scanty funds contributed for his 
wayfaring by grateful disciples tempted the cupidity of 
one bad man, and that one was the most important and 
serviceable member of the apostolic college ; for his tes- 
timony is of priceless worth. Could he have charged his 
Master with the shadow of wrong, he might have made 
his thirty pieces of silver thirty thousand, and his employ- 



GOD IN CHRIST. 173 

ers, if they had not had money enough, would have levied 
contributions throughout Judaea for the deficit ; but when 
he turned traitor, there was absolutely nothing for him to 
betray except the spot where the homeless Saviour was 
going to pass the night. But had there been that in 
Christ's outward condition which could be preyed upon, 
his public appearance at a time when the expectations of 
his people were so intensely raised, would have attracted 
a horde of such miscreants. Then, too, any definite rank 
which could be looked up to by the multitude would have 
removed him from the sympathy of those beneath him, 
while he would have stood on an arena, on which even 
faultless excellence could not have exempted him from 
paltry rivalries and jealousies. It was necessary that in 
his worldly estate he should be at once above contempt 
and beneath envy. 

3. Above all, it was necessary that he who should bear 
the Divine image, and stand forth as the world's exem- 
plar, should be " a man of sorrows, and acquainted with 
grief" ; that he should tread the darkest passages of the 
earthly pilgrimage, and the valley of the death-shadow. 
It is the tendency of human thought to connect all pain- 
ful experiences — penury, suffering, and death — with the 
Divine displeasure, to regard afflictions as judgments of 
Heaven, and even to brand the victims of signally heavy 
calamities as sinners beyond all others. How numerous 
are the traces of this habit of mind in the sacred writ- 
ings ! It forms, as you know, the burden of the harangues 
of several among the interlocutors in the dramatic poem 
of Job ; it is referred to repeatedly in the Psalms, and 
was on several occasions forced on the animadversion of 
Christ. At the same time, we find it not infrequently 
recognized in the ancient classics. Only through the 



174 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

destitution, homelessness, agony, and cross of the Sinless 
One did the world learn that him whom God loves He 
chastens. Then, too, it is in these experiences that man 
most needs both example and sympathy, — the example 
of submission, trust, and hope, the sympathy of one who 
has endured and overcome. The suffering now look to 
Christ in his agony, and repeat his prayer, " Not my will, 
but thine, be done," till pain and grief are merged in 
resignation, and turned to joy by the hope that is full of 
immortality. The dying look to the grave as the place 
where the Lord lay, and whence he rose, and calmly 
and rejoicingly commit their departing spirits to their 
Father. Grief is transfigured by his endurance ; death is 
swallowed up in victory by the might of his cross and the 
power of his resurrection. 

The influence of a suffering Redeemer has left its in- 
delible traces in language, which often embodies in single 
words whole chapters of human history. Before he suf- 
fered, the terms that denoted sad experiences were all 
such as represented only the malignant aspect of what 
man endured, or, at best, the single fact of endurance. 
Take, for instance, the word calamitas (calamity), the 
condition, some say, of the blighted stalk, which bears no 
ear of grain ; others, of the broken reed. 1 To Tertullian, 2 
the earliest of the Latin Fathers, belongs, I believe, the 
appropriation of the first word that tells the whole story, 
expresses the divine side, the blessed ministry of sorrow, — 
tribulatio (tribulation), — threshing, the process by which 

1 Wedgwood regards calamitas as not improbably derived from the root 
which furnishes, in the Welsh, col, denoting loss or misfortune ; a root which 
he traces in the Latin incolumis, expressing the negation of loss or misfortune. 
If we admit this derivation, the word calamitas is still void of any spiritual 
or hopeful significance. 

2 Adversus Judceos, 11. m 






GOD IN CHRIST. 175 

the elements of character are separated, the chaff given 
to the winds, the wheat heaped up for the harvest of 
which the angels are the reapers. 

I have thus shown you that in the person and relations 
of Christ as Mediator, as the image of God, as the ex- 
emplar of man, we have precisely the offices which on 
a priori grounds we should anticipate from the loving 
providence of God ; and that in his condition in life, his 
sufferings, and his death, we have the very elements 
which alone could have met the needs of man, and thus 
have satisfied the postulate of natural religion. 



LECTURE IX. 



IMMORTALITY. 



Among the contents of the Christian revelation, next 
in intrinsic importance to the Divine attributes is the 
immortality of the soul. In my first Lecture I showed 
you that in the nature of things immortality cannot be an 
object of consciousness, or a necessary inference from 
known premises ; that there are in the external universe 
analogies both for and against it ; and that analogy, even 
could it be urged on the affirmative side alone, proves 
nothing, but is valid only as an answer to objections 
against truths or beliefs that rest on independent grounds 
of argument and evidence. A life beyond death can 
be made certain only by revelation direct or mediate, 
verbal or phenomenal, — by the authenticated testimony 
of a divine messenger, or by the return to this world of 
those whom we call dead, to teach us that death is a 
name and not a fact. Yet if man is destined for a higher 
sphere of being, we should expect to find some birth- 
marks of this destiny, and some features in his outward 
condition here and in the structure and course of the 
visible universe that harmonize with this hypothesis rather 
than with the theory of annihilation. It is in this direc- 
tion that I now propose to guide your inquiry. 

In the first place, death, so far as we know, is a merely 
physical change ; its observed phenomena are solely ma- 
terial ; and if there be an immaterial principle in man, 



IMMORTALITY. 177 

a soul that depends not on the bodily organism for its 
existence and its capacity of perception, thought, and 
emotion, it is at least possible that the soul may live on 
when the body dies. What evidence then have we of 
the immateriality of the soul ? Consciousness, it is com- 
monly maintained, affirms the soul to be immaterial. 
The self-conscious me does not identify itself with the 
limbs and the organs. We habitually think of them 
as not themselves perceiving, reflecting, judging, but as 
instruments which we employ for these ends, — as not 
themselves powers, but as the irresponsible agents of a 
controlling pow T er, — as belonging philosophically to the 
same category with lenses, canes, and calculating-ma- 
chines. When we use the word i, w r e mean by it some- 
thing more than the whole body, — something which 
imparts to the multiform body a oneness other than that 
which belongs to it by virtue of its mere structure 
(which latter oneness, we know, is literally dissolved in 
death), — something which owns the body as its property, 
and commands it as its servant. 

" The purple stream which through my vessels glides 
Dull and unconscious flows, like common tides. 
The pipes through which the circling juices play 
Are not that thinking I no more than they. 
This frame, compacted with transcendent skill 
Of moving joints obedient to my will, 
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree, 
Waxes and wastes. I call it mine, not me." 

If mind is the result of material organization, then 
every mental action must be a material process and pro- 
duct. If a mere process, we might apply to it a theory 
corresponding to the undulatory theory of light and heat, 
and it is at least conceivable that vibrations of the brain, 
or electric impulses sent along those magnetic wires, the 

8* L 



178 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

nerves, should cause the modes of being which we desig- 
nate as ideas, judgments, and emotions. But the perma- 
nence of these modes of being is fatal to the undulatory 
hypothesis. Every mental action is not only a process, 
but a product. Something is inwrought which remains 
in existence. Permanent modifications of the conscious- 
ness are made during every waking hour. In order to 
render memory possible on the materialistic hypothesis, 
every throb of a nerve, every vibration of the brain, must 
leave its life-long traces in the material structure. But to 
conceive of this carries us immeasurably beyond the mar- 
vellous disclosures of microscopic discovery. Myriads of 
legible and enduring entries must be made within every 
needle's point of the brain. If the unnumbered words, 
dates, facts, and experiences that lie in the memory make 
each some permanent notch, furrow, or mark, of whatever 
kind, or however minute, the brain in very infancy would 
be too fall to admit of added mental growth. Physically, 
it is as utterly impossible for a life-record to be kept with- 
in the walls of a human cranium, as it would be for a 
year's accounts of the United States Treasury to be tran- 
scribed on half a sheet of note-paper. 

It may, indeed, be objected to this reasoning, that in 
point of fact mental action depends for its precision, vigor, 
and brilliancy on the degree in which the bodily organiza- 
tion is symmetrical and healthful, and especially on the 
shape and size of the cranium. I answer, that this would 
of necessity be the case, equally on the materialistic and 
on the immaterial hypothesis. The question is not as to 
the means, but as to the seat and source, of mental action. 
The immaterialist by no means denies the instrumentality 
of the bodily organization, — its necessary instrumentality 
during the present state of being. The body is the soul's 



IMMORTALITY. 179 

case of tools, and the quality of the soul's action must 
depend on the strength and temper of those tools. Un- 
less they are in good order, the soul must work, either 
not at all, as hi idiocy, or languidly, as in imbecility, or 
without reasonable purpose, as in insanity. But this lia- 
bility to inferior execution here by no means proves that 
the soul is incapable of surviving its present set of tools, 
and, with better instruments, of doing ample justice to a 
skill and power native, but unsuspected now. Give the 
most accomplished artist dull or clumsy instruments, his 
work will be vastly below a master's hand ; but Ms taste 
and genius, though hidden from human eye, remain un- 
impaired, nor will his present rough and ill-shapen pro- 
ductions prevent him from one day rivalling Canova, 
should he be surrounded with the material aids through 
which alone Canova could give form to his conceptions. 
This temporary dependence, yet essential and ultimate 
non-dependence, of the soul on the body is well illustrated 
in these stanzas from Sir John Davies's poem on the Im- 
mortality of the Soul : — 

u As a good harper, stricken far in years, 

Into whose cunning hands the gout doth fall, 
All his old crotchets in his brain he bears, 
But on his harp plays ill, or not at all ; — 

" But if Apollo takes his gout away, 

That he his nimble fingers may apply, 
Apollo's self will envy at his play, 
And all the world applaud his minstrelsy." ! 

There is, then, no conclusive objection to the soul's 
immateriality derived from the correlation between a well 
or ill developed brain and a well or ill working mind ; 
while the affirmative argument from consciousness and 

1 Original, Nature, and Immortality of the Soul, Section xxxiii. 



180 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

memory remains unimpeached. But if the soul be im- 
material, it is a separate existence from the body, and the 
disorganization of the body cannot destroy it. If it dies 
with the body, it must nevertheless die by a direct act of 
annihilation, or by the reabsorption into the universal 
soul affirmed by pantheism, which is simply a euphemism 
for annihilation. But annihilation has never occurred 
within human experience or observation. The death of 
organized being is only a separation of particles, which 
enter forthwith into new combinations, and generally into 
new forms of life. The very phenomena of death, there- 
fore, as they involve no destruction of any visible or 
tangible portion of the being that dies, furnish a strong 
presumptive argument against the destruction by death 
of the immaterial portion of the being, of which the senses 
cannot take cognizance. 

But if the soul survive the body, how can it live on in 
self-consciousness and activity ? How, without a bodily 
organization, can it retain its conversance with the physi- 
cal universe ? How can sights reach the soul without 
the eye, or sounds without the ear ? How can locomo- 
tion take place without material organs, to overcome 
material existence ? I reply, that, in point of fact, the 
ideas of things seen, heard, and felt reach the conscious- 
ness, not only without the aid of the organs of sense, but 
without the existence of corresponding objects in the 
outward universe. In insanity, sights which the eye sees 
not, sounds which the ear hears not, are inwardly per- 
ceived with the utmost vividness. In dreams, too, we 
seem to see, hear, and feel as distinctly as when the 
senses are all awake, and conversant with their appropri- 
ate objects. Now if the soul can receive these several 
classes of impressions without employing the organs of 



IMMORTALITY. 181 

sense, why may it not without possessing them ? Or if 
it be capable of seeing, hearing, and feeling things that 
are not, how can we affirm that it is incapable of per- 
ceiving things that are ? Moreover, it is not the eye that 
sees, or the ear that hears. 1 Dissect these organs entire 
from the human frame, they are powerless. Leave them 
entire, and darken the soul by insanity, they carry it 
false reports. It is the soul that looks out through the 
eyes and listens through the ears. And does not its 
power of seeing and hearing by means of these instru- 
ments imply and include a perceptive power which might 
be exercised through other instrumentalities, or directly 
and without medium ? It is at least a tenable hypothesis, 
that sight and hearing, and locomotion also, are functions 
inherent in the soul ; and that the bodily organization is 
less the means of their exercise, than a temporary limit 
and hinderance to their extent and power. It may be that 
we in our present state are spirits in prison, — that the 
eye is the prison- window through which the soul enjoys 
a little portion of its native range of vision, the ear an 
aperture in the prison-wall through which we catch a few 
of the sounds which, if set at large, we might take in 
through a vast extent of space, while the feet, so far 
from being the means of motion, only measure the direc- 
tion and length of the spirit's chain. If this be true, 
when the dungeon-walls decay, when we quit our house 
of bondage, our disembodied souls may acquire at once a 
keenness of vision of which we cannot now conceive, 
hear the full diapason of nature's harmony, and move 

1 " Nos enira ne nunc quidem oculis cerniraus ea, quae videmus ; neque 
enim est ullus sensus in corpore, sed, ut non solum physici docent, verum 
etiam medici, qui ista aperta et patefacta viderunt, viae quasi quaedam sunt 
ad oculos, ad aures, ad nares, a sede animi perforatae." — Cicero, Tusc. 
Quaest. I. 20. 



182 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE, 

unchecked and free at every prompting of love or 
duty. 1 

But this is not the only, nor to my mind the most 
probable hypothesis. It is entirely conceivable that a 
virtual resurrection of the body may be coincident with 
its death ; not, indeed, the recombination of the precise 
material elements that were combined before death (which, 
if it take place, can be realized only at some far-off res- 
urrection epoch), but the re-embodiment of the soul in an 
organism allied to and developed from that which has 
here been its dwelling-place, so that it shall be, in apos- 
tolic language, " not unclothed, but clothed upon." Some- 

1 " Nam nunc quidem, quanquam foramina ilia, quae patent ad animum a 
corpore, callidissimo artificio natura fabricata est, tamen terrenis concretisque 
corporibus sunt intersepta quodam modo. Cum autem nihil erit praeter ani- 
mum, nulla res objecta impediet, quo minus percipiat, quale quidque sit." — 
Tusc. Qusest. I. 20. 

This view of the (so-called) organs of sense as avenues rather than instru- 
ments of perception, and of the soul as endowed with the power of exercising 
independently the functions which it exercises through these avenues, is well 
expressed in those quaint stanzas of Henry More : — 

" Like to a light fast lock'd in lanthorn dark, 

Whereby by night our wary steps we guide 

In shabby streets, and dirty chanels mark ; 

Some weaker rayes from the black top do glide, 

And flusher streams perhaps through th' horny side. 

But when we 've past the perill of the way, 

Arrived at home, and laid that case aside, 

The naked light how clearly doth it ray, 
And spread its joyful beames as bright as summer's day! 

" Even so, the soul in this contracted state, 

Confined to these straight instruments of sense, 

More dull and narrowly doth operate ; 

At this hole heares, the sight must ray from thence, 

Here tasts, there smells. But when she 's gone from hence, 

Like naked lamp she is one shining spheare, 

And round about has perfect cognoscence 

What ere in her horizon doth appear ; 
She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear." 



IMMORTALITY. 183 

thing of this kind may be implied in those words of St. 
Paul, " Thou sowest not that body that shall be, .... 
but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him." Mat- 
ter has all conceivable and inconceivable degrees of tenu- 
ity. Science admits the existence, concurrently with the 
atmosphere through its whole extent, and in the inter- 
stellar spaces where there is no atmosphere, of an impal- 
pable and imponderable ether, winch transmits the calorific 
waves of the sunlight and the undulations of the solar, 
lunar, and stellar rays. Mind must be either infinite and 
omnipresent, which but one mind can be, or else localized 
and circumscribed by some organism, which need not be 
gross or dense, but may have as little of earthiness as this 
ether in which the planets move, which yet shall give it a 
place hi the creation, and shall enable it to act on and to 
be acted upon by other beings and objects in the universe. 
And it is entirely conceivable that by means of some such 
organism the soul in dying may retain its personality, nay, 
more, may preserve all that constituted its individual iden- 
tity, even what might recall wonted associations with form 
and feature, voice and manner, and render it distinctly 
recognizable by feUow-spirite. 

I suggest these hypotheses, not as solving the mystery 
which w the great teacher, Death," alone can solve, but to 
show that, if the soul be immaterial, there is nothing in 
the dissolution of the body which should render its sur- 
vivance of that event impossible or improbable. 

I would next speak of the presumption in behalf of the 
survival of the soul after death derived from the changes 
during life winch it survives. Organic life is perpetual 
decomposition and reconstruction ; in other words, con- 
stant death and birth. There is probably not a particle of 



184 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

matter in one of our bodies which was there half a dozen 
years ago; and, death excepted, there can hardly be a 
more entire physical change than occurs between child- 
hood and manhood, or between twenty and fourscore, the 
change being not only one of size, shape, strength, and 
voice, but often of the whole physical constitution, — the 
'puny child that can hardly be kept alive growing into a 
stalwart youth, the invalid outliving the infirmities of 
many years and becoming a vigorous old man ; or, on the 
other hand, the fairest promise of health and strength un- 
dermined by functional disease, of which there was not a 
trace visible in the child or the young man. Death differs 
from these changes, not in its entireness, but only in its 
suddenness, and the capacity of the soul to retain its iden- 
tity while the physical frame gradually loses its identity 
certainly involves the same capacity in the more rapid and 
paroxysmal loss of the physical identity in death. 

Consider, too, the lesion of the bodily organs by sick- 
ness or accident, in which the soul retains its integrity. 
Not only may the limbs be amputated, the eyes quenched, 
the lungs almost consumed, but the nerves may be para- 
lyzed, the brain wounded or diseased, and yet the mind 
may remain unimpaired, the soul unclouded, nay, as if in 
mockery of mere physical hinderances, the spirit may 
wield a mightier power and wing a loftier flight than ever 
before. And in cerebral disease attended by delirium, 
there is no defect in the quantity and intensity of mental 
action, but often a preternatural brilliancy and power, 
though the consciousness ceases to take accurate cogni- 
zance of surrounding persons and objects. 

Most prophetic of immortality beyond all else in human 
experience are the phenomena often witnessed up to the 
very moment of dissolution. I have repeatedly stood by 



IMMORTALITY. 185 

the death-bed of one attenuated by long infirmity, every 
vital process clogged, the pulse intermittent, the blood 
already becoming stagnant ; and I have seen the dying 
still in the full vigor of his intellect, master of his position, 
clearer and stronger in thought and judgment than any 
one of the by-standers, addressing appropriate counsel or 
consolation to each of the afflicted circle, dictating mes- 
sages of love to the absent, and leaving no person or in- 
terest forgotten that had the remotest right to a place in 
his remembrance. I have heard, too, in the hour and 
in the embrace of death, not the feverish ecstasies of 
unreasoning fanaticism, but the serene utterances of a 
mature religious wisdom, of undoubting faith, of quiet 
trust, of a foreseeing hope that had already crossed the 
separating stream, and passed within the golden gates ; 
and in the eye kindled with a purer, holier light than ever 
glows except in the Christian's ascension-room, in the 
wan countenance radiant with the foreshining of the heav- 
enly day, in the air of joyous expectancy with which the 
parting moment is waited for and welcomed, the soul's 
voice is : " Death, I am not thine, and I defy thy power. 
I am mightier than thou art. Thou art but the door- 
keeper of my house not made with hands, my usher into 
the blessed society of the unfallen and the redeemed." 
From such a death-scene into annihilation how vast the 
leap ! between them how immeasurable the contrast ! 
while there seems not a step, not even a filmy cloud or 
an unparted veil, between the scene and heaven. From 
such a presence unbelief is banished. The sceptical by- 
stander ceases to doubt, always for the moment, often 
forever; while to the Christian the hand that lifted the 
widow's son from the bier becomes visible, the voice that 
called Lazarus from the tomb pulses upon the inward ear 



186 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE, 

in tones that remain unforgotten till lie hears them again 
in his own dying hour. 

From these phenomena of approaching death the argu- 
ment is obvious and strong. Did the soul die with the 
body, we should certainly expect that it would betray 
along with the body symptoms of impending dissolution, 
that its light would be dimmed and flickering, its con- 
sciousness confused, its power of consecutive thought 
impeded, its memory clouded, its hold on wonted beliefs 
relaxed. But if at that last hour it manifests all and 
more than all of vitality that was ever witnessed in the 
prime and joy of its earthly being, there is a strong pre- 
sumption that it is destined to survive the death-change, 
and to put off its worn-out garment for its ascension-robe. 

I now ask your attention to the arguments for immor- 
tality derived from the intellectual and moral nature of 
man. And first, though, as I showed you in a former 
Lecture, we cannot be conscious of immortality, we are 
conscious of an innate and indestructible desire for contin- 
ued existence. This desire belongs, with rare exceptions, 
to all developed natures. It is something more than the 
mere love of the earthly life, for it is often the strongest 
where that love is the weakest. None have felt it more 
than those who have offered themselves to death for their 
country, their race, or their religion. It is a feeling allied 
to all noble impulses and generous deeds. It has been 
the fountain-head of all patriotism and philanthropy. It 
inspires the longing for posthumous fame. It prompts the 
appeal which the great and good, who have been scorned 
and vilified by their contemporaries, have so often made 
to the righteous verdict of posterity, as if they should see 
themselves justified after their bodies had ceased to be. 



IMMORTALITY. 187 

Now, if man wholly dies when the body dies, we can 
hardly reconcile this sentiment, so almost universal in civ- 
ilized and cultivated communities, with the Divine veracity 
and integrity. 

Another argument for immortality may be drawn from 
the unsuitableness of the present state of things to man's 
mental faculties, his capacities of enjoyment, and his con- 
ceptions of happiness and perfection. Suppose that you 
saw an egg for the first time, not knowing what it was, 
and that you discovered and opened it just as the infant 
bird was ready to force his way out of the shell. You 
would see a system of members and organs for which the 
creature could have no use in that confined condition, — 
wings and feet without space to fly or walk, a digestive 
apparatus without the opportunity of procuring food, eyes 
without a field of vision, in fine, a constitution entirely 
unsuitable to its present state. Your inference would be, 
that, though the egg-shell was the creature's birthplace, 
it was not destined to be its home, — that it was designed 
for a mode of life in which its organs and faculties could 
all find their appropriate sphere and exercise their appro- 
priate functions, — that it was created for the light and 
the air, though now shut out from both. 

Man's condition in this world is not unaptly typified by 
the bird in the shell. He has wings which he cannot here 
unfold, and eyes of the spirit which find no adequate field 
of vision here. He has faculties, capacities, and desires, 
which here seek in vain for free scope and full gratifica- 
tion. He has powers which here are almost dormant, like 
the cramped pinions of the yet imprisoned bird. He finds 
the elements of the material universe often hostile, always 
unsatisfying. He has hardly learned to adapt himself to 
the world in which he is born, indeed is less adapted to it 



188 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

than the new-born bee or beaver, when he is summoned to 
leave it. He lives and dies a stranger and a pilgrim here, 
oftener in conflict than in harmony with his surroundings, 
oftener yearning for a loftier than contented with a lower 
sphere. Our intellectual powers grasp at infinity. We 
are conscious of a boundless capacity of research, knowl- 
edge, and progress, and our curiosity grows faster than its 
gratification, our sense of ignorance faster than our knowl- 
edge. In no department of life do we ever reach our 
aims or embody our conceptions. The painter enshrines 
in canvas, the sculptor hews from the marble, forms glow- 
ing with beauty, redolent of purity and loveliness, vividly 
lifelike to every beholder ; but he has floating before his 
mind visions of artistical perfectness to which he has 
hardly begun to give expression. The poet, whose inspi- 
ration thrills the universal heart, is tortured by unutterable 
imaginings, glimpses of glory from the parted heavens, 
which language cannot clothe, aspirations too lofty and 
ardent to flow in the broken harmony of earthly song. 
The man of science who transcends his fellows in his 
sweeping generalizations is still unsatisfied; for he con- 
ceives of profounder depths, more perfect adaptations, 
broader harmonies, more comprehensive laws, than he has 
the means of verifying, and each new discovery that 
dawns on his own mind or is suggested by kindred spirits 
only fills him with the more earnest desire to bathe forever 
in exhaustless truth. The pursuit of happiness, too, is 
pursuit, but less and less attainment. Its fountains are 
summer-dried or winter-frozen. In the midst of all that 
can feast the senses or minister to the pride of life, there 
is still the inward craving for a higher, purer joy. So is 
it, also, with the noblest of aims, that of moral excellence. 
However exemplary the character may be, it falls short 



IMMORTALITY. 189 

of its ideal. The good man's goal recedes, his standard 
grows higher. His endeavors reach out far beyond his at- 
tainments, — the spirit willing, but the flesh weak. This 
disproportion between man and his condition, this constant 
outreaeliing, upreaching, is certainly no faint indication of 
a future state, where our conceptions will be realized and 
our aspirations satisfied, where our endeavors will over- 
take our aims, and fruition will answer to desire. It is 
intrinsically improbable that He, who must love all that 
is noble hi man far more than man can love it, should 
have implanted these tendencies in our being without pro- 
viding for their ultimate consummation. 

This argument is strengthened when we consider our 
relations to the visible universe. We are placed within 
sight of numberless worlds, and are endowed with the 
capacity of learning something of their relations and laws, 
but are left in hivincible ignorance and intense curiosity 
as to all else concerning them. Can it be that a good 
God has opened this gorgeous immensity of creation to 
our view, to close it forever to our knowledge ? Had He 
destined us to an eternal slumber in the grave, I cannot 
but think that He would have enveloped us in a denser 
atmosphere, and not have shown us other worlds than 
our own. 

We might also infer a continuance of life beyond death 
from the continued growth of the character in extreme 
old age. The moral principles and habits become more 
and more profoundly fixed with every added year of a 
long life, and never appear more characteristically or 
manifest themselves in fuller vigor than in its last days 
and scenes. All those powers which are related to the 
present state alone are liable to decline. The perceptive, 
apprehensive, and active organs and faculties lose their 



190 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

quickness and keenness. There remains the wonted ca- 
pacity neither for business nor for enjoyment. Yet there 
may still be increase of virtue, a progressive refinement 
and exaltation of character, nay, often a peculiar ripeness 
and mellowness, as of fruit which grows luscious only as 
it drinks in the sunbeams through the thinned leafage of 
autumn. Above all, love, which, the Christian writers 
tell us, is to outlast faith and hope, to constitute the 
essence of the heavenly life, to supersede by its loyal af- 
finities and infallible instincts the doubtful reasoning and 
lame philosophy of this world, so that knowledge in its 
wonted forms shall cease, to be its own interpreter from 
spirit to spirit, so that tongues shall fail, — love, both God- 
ward and man ward, grows under the lengthening shadows, 
and is never so radiant and genial as in the latter days of 
a devout and kind pilgrimage. I knew of an old man of a 
hundred and five years, blind and deaf, roused only with 
the utmost difficulty to take notice of the presence of per- 
sons and objects around him, whose lips were incessantly 
moving during his waking hours in audible and fervent 
praise and prayer ; and I could number up (and so could 
some of you, I doubt not) a goodly list of old men and 
women who have seemed to belong more to the heavenly 
society than to the world in which they lingered, and with 
whom our converse has been like that of Bunyan's Pil- 
grim with the Shining Ones who walked at times in the 
country of Beulah, on the hither side of the death-river. 
In our domestic and social circles have we not a like expe- 
rience in the tender sympathy, the persistent charity, the 
forbearing, forgiving, exhaustless affection, the intense 
kindliness of our aged kindred and friends, who never 
seem so dear as when they are spared beyond the wonted 
term of the earthly life ? Now this growth of that which 



IMMORTALITY. 191 

constitutes all moral, spiritual vitality, after the law of 
decrease has superseded that of increase in everything 
else, this culminating as one declines, this nearing the 
meridian of a higher sphere as one approaches the earthly 
horizon, indicates, as seems to me, with clear and strong 
emphasis, the survivance of the moral nature when dust 
returns to dust. 

A like inference may be obviously drawn from the 
strength of our specific attachments to individuals. Is it 
conceivable that God would have made natural affection 
so intense and tender, — would have bound heart with 
heart by such close-clinging filaments of common feeling, 
— had he not intended that friendship and love should be 
deathless ? 

A strong argument for immortality is derived from the 
waste which we must suppose in God's spiritual universe, 
if there be no higher life. You know how very large a 
proportion of our race die in early infancy, and how many 
more die before they have reached a maturity adequate to 
any of the trusts or duties of active life. Nor do I believe 
that it is a mere fancy that is implied in the classic saying, 
" Whom the gods love die young." The very delicacy 
of organization which attends and cherishes the richest 
developments of mind and heart, and the cerebral fulness 
and activity which are often the accompaniments and 
tokens of the most beautiful promise, with sad frequency 
are morbid indications, and give presage of early death. 
This is strange and inexplicable, if death be what it 
seems. We cannot reconcile with God's perfect wisdom 
or with his unchanging goodness this wanton destruction 
of so large a part of the beauty and loveliness, the hope 
and joy, of our race. But the mystery ceases when we 
take the higher life into our view. It is natural that the 



192 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

fruit first ripe should be first gathered, — natural that the 
most hopeful subjects of nurture and instruction should be 
placed under conditions pre-eminently favorable to their 
growth, — natural that some at least of the most delicate 
and sensitive spirits should be spared the rude vicissitudes 
and stern conflicts through which alone their earthly path 
to heaven could lie. 

A still stronger case of waste is presented in the lives, 
not cut short in infancy, but developed and matured in 
strength and beauty, yet with no scope for earthly enjoy- 
ment, no adequate mode of self-expression or post of 
service, no experience save of the obscure and shady side, 
the trial and the bitterness of life. Here, for instance, is 
a widow, alone and desolate, sustaining her needy age by 
incessant and exhausting toil. Her sun was darkened in 
its very morning, her midway walk was under gathering 
clouds, and they have settled down upon her declining 
years in a density which death alone can dissipate. In 
every relation she has been bereaved, in every earthly 
prospect disappointed. She has indeed in her spirit been 
strengthened and exalted, and the flow of her thoughts is 
serene and heavenly. She loves her Saviour, and his love 
is the light of her darkness, the joy of her desolation. 
But with a character richly trained by this arduous disci- 
pline, her influence is but little felt in a very contracted 
circle. Spiritually capable of large usefulness, she has 
neither the conventional culture, the position, the leisure, 
nor the means for doing aught for the service of God and 
man beyond the beautiful example of her patient waiting 
and submissive trust. She has been educated worthily of 
an extended and lofty sphere of duty ; she has but the 
narrowest and humblest. Yet God reigns. Is it possible 
that her training is to no purpose ? that she has been 



IMMORTALITY. 193 

made a sport for calamity with no ulterior prospect of a 
condition worthy of her capacity and her character ? 
Can the extinction of being await her at death ? Do not 
such instances (and they are by no means rare) point with 
unerring prophecy to a time when God will make up his 
jewels, — when gems here unset shall grace the diadem 
of the King of kings ? Do they not indicate a field of 
duty for which He is educating his most loyal servants, 
— a charge adequate to the capacity so painfully brought 
forth and perfected, — a stewardship over many things for 
those who have been found thus faithful in few things ? 

I pass to another argument. The strife among the dis- 
ciples of Jesus for the chief places about their Master's 
person when he should enter upon his kingdom is the 
type of a strife perpetually waged in the world, and which 
has its source in the native and indestructible instinct of 
self-advancement. It is one of the tokens of the imper- 
fection of this world, good as it is, and one of the natural 
and perpetual prophecies of immortality, that there are 
not great places enough here for all who have the capacity 
and the desire to fill them, and, still more, that what great 
places there are, are often not filled by great men, but 
that there is a pretty general misplacing of people, the 
small in great places, the great in small places, as if this 
were a nursery of souls rather than their final home, — 
the anteroom in which they are waiting to be sorted and 
ranked, not the palace in which they are to assume their 
several posts of service. The world has indeed its stand- 
ard ; but that standard is more likely to be shortened to 
the measure of those below it, than to be stretched to the 
stature of those above it. Some who are not worthy of 
the world secure its favor, while those of whom the world 
is not worthy almost always forfeit its favor. Thus who 
9 M 



194 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

would have recognized as the first man of his age St. 
Paul, at the whipping-post, in the stocks, on board the 
prison-ship, chained to two Roman soldiers, his severed 
head held up for the mockery of a brutal populace ? Yet 
there live many now who think that they see in him a 
greater manhood than in any being, the Heaven-born 
alone excepted, who ever trod the earth. But even this 
posthumous recognition is rare. Of those who have 
borne all the marks of greatness, how many must there 
have been for whom there was neither place in their life- 
time, nor niche for their names in the memorial tablet of 
posterity ! Most aptly does the Apostle compare this life, 
with its rewards, to the Olympic games, in which, however 
vigorous runners there might be, only one received the 
prize. Yet all run. Distinction, — greatness of place, 
relative if not absolute, — pre-eminence among one's fel- 
lows, is the universal ambition. Almost all who are not 
sluggards or sensualists have this aim, and all other aims 
resolve themselves into this. Thus the scholar seldom so 
loves learning for its own sake that he does not covet its 
reputation also. The artist, with all his love for the beau- 
tiful, wants to make for himself a name. The strife of the 
votaries of fashion is for leadership, for greatness in their 
own small way. The pursuit of wealth is less for the sub- 
stance that it may purchase, than for the place that it may 
give. Yet all these aims are, we know, more likely to 
fail than to succeed, and unnumbered persons with vast 
desires and large endeavors are kept in or below medi- 
ocrity. The effort, too, is one of rivalry, and therefore 
has its bad side, its malignant aspect. The aim is to over- 
top and outdo one another. The strife to be the greatest 
involves the endeavor to make others less ; for there is no 
high earthly platform on which there is room for more 
than a few to stand. 



IMMORTALITY. 195 

But God cannot have made this desire to excel an 
indestructible element of our nature, without giving us 
a field for its successful exercise without the passion of 
emulation or rivalry. It cannot be pre-eminence, but 
excellence by a positive standard, for which He would 
have us strive. There must be somewhere an arena in 
which all can so run that they may obtain. There must 
be somewhere great places enough for all who seek them. 
But there are not here. We are constrained, then, to 
look to the life eternal, where alone there can be as many 
prizes as there are competitors, as many great places as 
there are great souls. 

The arguments for immortality which I have cited are, 
I know you will agree with me, strong, weighty, con- 
clusive. They seem independent of revelation. Yet 
they are all derived from Christian culture, many of 
them from Christian experience ; and they seem the 
most forceful to those who look primarily to Christ for 
the hope full of immortality, and then hear his revelation 
echoed from nature and experience/ And, more than all, 
they come to us most genially in our unburdened and 
happy hours. We rejoice in them : we are thankful for 
them. But in our times of need and dread, in our de- 
pression and sorrow, in the hour of bereavement and 
under the shadow of death, our cry is, — " Lord, to whom 
shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." 



LECTURE X. 

CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 

Two years ago, my colleague, Professor Peirce, who in 
his own department has no superior among living men, 
delivered from this platform a course of Lectures, in 
which he constructed a theoretical universe. He took 
his stand outside of the visible creation, assumed merely 
the existence of brute matter and certain fundamental 
mathematical laws, and determined by a masterly line of 
a priori reasoning what the proportions and relations of a 
universe constructed in accordance with those laws must 
have been. The result was the coincidence, point for 
point, of this universe of theory with the actually existing 
■universe. Now imagine a being who could occupy with 
regard to the entire realm of spiritual existence the posi- 
tion which our great mathematician holds as to the out- 
ward creation, — a being of perfect moral wisdom, — of 
such clear perceptions of actions, their tendencies, and 
their issues as might suit our conventional idea of a Ga- 
briel, — and let there be propounded to him this problem : 
" Given the existence of God and of a race of intelligent 
moral beings, to construct on these data a moral system, 
which shall insure and preserve harmony and beneficial 
relations between God and his creatures, as they ar6 
maintained by mathematical laws between God and his 
worlds." The system which would satisfy the conditions 
of this problem could be no other than the Gospel of 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 197 

Christ, not a precept, prohibition, or sanction wanting. 
Wipe out from the memory of earth and heaven every 
vestige of Christ's life and teachings, let there be wholly 
unoccupied ground for a new lawgiver, and let one arise 
of supreme and comprehensive wisdom, he could do no 
more than republish the moral system of the New Testa- 
ment. Who can add to this system ? or take from it ? 
What conceivable case of obligation is there which it does 
not reach and meet ? What conceivable case in which 
departure from it is safe ? It is not law for man alone, — 
it must be law wherever being is. Range in thought 
from planet to planet, — imagine the forms and aspects 
of life in them all as various as are the combinations of 
elements in their physical structure, or the celestial pano- 
ramas which make their night-seasons glorious, — still you 
can imagine no other law. You can conceive of no pos- 
sible condition in which the Sermon on the Mount would 
not have the same validity which it has with us. Nor as 
you look into the depths of eternity can you conceive of 
a stage or degree of progress, at which that compend of 
duty shall cease to be sole and sufficient law for angels 
and just men made perfect. 

But from some quarters there comes a counter-state- 
ment. Let us meet it. It is said by those who think that 
they have outgrown Christianity : — " There is noth- 
ing cosmopolitan in the Gospel. It is all Hebrew, Jew- 
ish, belonging to Christ's own age. He gave, indeed, 
good advice for his time ; but it is only by a pious sham, 
by a well-meant but palpable fiction, that we apply it to 
the nineteenth century. In the enhanced complications 
and responsibilities of these modem times, we virtually rec- 
ognize many laws of luty that have no counterpart in the 
New Testament. What, for instance, do we find there 



198 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

of the ethics of commerce, or of international relations ? 
What, that shall be our sufficient and infallible guide in 
our relations to negro slavery? What, that shall strike 
the just medium between religious toleration and religious 
indifference, or between freedom of thought and utter- 
ance, and dangerous and reprehensible license ? Is not 
ethical science in its nature progressive ? Have we not 
much clearer and larger views of duty than we find any 
traces of in the Gospel ? Is not this the fact, — that 
Jesus was the greatest moral teacher of his own age, but 
that we have outgrown him, and could not afford to go 
back to him ? " 

I answer : — By parity of reasoning, the world has out- 
grown Euclid's Elements of Geometry ; for in his day 
there was only now and then a field to measure, or an 
altitude to determine, or some very simple geometrical 
calculation to make, while we are doing a thousand things 
of which he never dreamed, such as grading railways, 
constructing massive fortifications, triangulating the sea- 
coast of entire continents. Yet in point of fact Euclid's 
Elements are the geometry of our time no less than of his. 
The processes now performed are simply the application 
of the laws that have come down to us from him to the 
enlarged and complicated demands of a higher civilization. 
Without those laws the problems before us would be un- 
manageable. They are capable of a practical solution 
only by methods involved in his treatise, and which he 
would have indicated, had these problems been proposed 
to him. 

In like manner, though there is in the Gospel no state- 
ment of the concrete moral problems of the nineteenth 
century, the only approach we make to their solution is 
by means of the very principles which Jesus stated in 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 199 

their applications to the problems of his day, and which 
could have been understood when he promulgated them 
only through their being thus applied. Indeed, so far 
are we from having outgrown the Gospel, that we still 
foil very far short of its scope, and depth, and spirituality. 
The most that we can say is, that the boasted progress of 
moral science has been in the direction of Christian moral- 
ity, — that there has been a growing tendency toward 
the embodiment of the precepts of the Gospel. In gov- 
ernment, in commerce, in political economy, there has 
been what we term a constant moral progress ever since 
the Protestant Reformation. Principles at first the sub- 
jects of fierce controversy have surmounted opposition, 
outlived dissent, and come to be regarded as axioms that 
do not admit of dispute. But when we examine any such 
axiom, — the vaunted discovery of the present or the last 
generation, — we always find that it is as old as the Gos- 
pel, that it fell perfectly shaped from* the lips of Jesus and 
found explicit record from the pen of the Evangelists, and 
that its modern form is but a translation of the words of 
Christ into scientific language, or an application of some 
broad principle of Christianity to some modern mode of 
thought or action. In all the departments of concrete 
ethics, Christianity, so far from being outgrown, is slowly 
but surely working its way into the hearts of nations, into 
the great heart of humanity, thus progressively fulfilling 
the prediction, " Behold, I make all things new." 

To verify this view of the Christian morality in all its 
details, would transcend my present limits ; I shall there- 
fore confine my attention to the two prime ethical discov- 
eries or revelations of Christianity, which together cover 
the whole of human duty, and thus include the very 
details which I have not time to treat separately. 



200 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

I. Natural philosophy tells us that the orbits of the 
heavenly bodies result from the combining of two opposite 
tendencies ; — the centripetal, by which the satellite is at- 
tracted to its primary, the planet to the sun, the system 
to the centre of gravity of the cluster to which it belongs ; 
and the centrifugal, by virtue of which alone the sphere 
would be hurled on its solitary and darkening path into 
unknown depths of space, and would be liable to the 
perilous attraction or ruinous contact of its sister-worlds. 
The human soul is, by the necessity of its being, subject 
to these two opposite tendencies; — the centripetal, by 
which it is drawn to its Source and Author ; the centrifu- 
gal, by which it is made liable to every form of attraction 
and influence from its fellow-beings. Accordingly, to the 
human conscience duty presents itself under these two 
aspects, — that of supreme devotion to God, and that of 
paramount obligation to man. Each may be plausibly 
represented as comprising the whole of duty. It may be 
urged, on the one hand, that He who has made us all that 
we are, and has given us all that we have, justly claims all 
our thoughts, all our powers, all our affections ; and that 
even the charities of life, if they arrest our contemplation 
of the Infinite One, check the flow of prayer and praise, 
and interest us in inferior beings and objects, are a rob- 
bery of God, a scanting of the incense due on his altar, 
of the living, perpetual sacrifice by which alone we can 
be worthy of his love. On the other hand, it may be 
maintained that we can neither enhance his wealth, nor 
increase his happiness, nor add to his glory ; that th£ 
needs and claims of our fellow-men are constant and 
imperative, demanding all of time and faculty we have ; 
and that the fervor and energy given to devotion are 
uselessly, wrongfully, and injuriously abstracted from our 
brethren. 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 201 

The prime desideratum in a moral system is the just 
balancing of these centripetal and centrifugal forces, the 
reconciliation, the unifying, of piety and charity, so that 
there shall be the maximum of both, and so that each 
shall render the other more intense and fervent. This is 
the first moral problem of natural religion, and if Chris- 
tianity alone solves it, then in this respect Christianity is 
pre-eminently natural religion. Let us trace these ten- 
dencies separately, and then see how they are combined 
and harmonized in Christianity. 

We will first trace the centripetal force unmodified, — 
the exclusively pietistic theory of duty, of which we have 
an affluence of examples under both Pagan and Christian 
auspices. The pietistic impulse may be one of fear. In 
this case the devotee is haunted by a morbid consciousness 
of impurity and sin, — morbid, I say, for the healthful 
consciousness of personal delinquency which we cannot 
feel too profoundly is allayed by penitence, and finds re- 
course to the fountain of forgiveness opened in the cross 
of the world's Redeemer. But the devotee's one idea is 
propitiation by personal sacrifice and suffering, — the buy- 
ing off of penalty in the world to come by gratuitous 
torture sought and endured in the present life. Under 
this impulse, the Hindoo has torn the living flesh from liis 
limbs, hung his quivering frame on hooks of steel, flung 
himself under the car of Juggernaut, or buried himself in 
easier suicide under the saving waters of the sacred river. 
The Christian ascetic, in the same spirit, has abjured 
all the ties of family and society, fed on street-offal, lived 
in booths, huts, and caverns in which he could neither 
stand nor sit, passed years of vigil on pillars, lacerated his 
body with the hair-cloth and the scourge, courted insult 
and outrage, gloried in rags, filth, and vermin. Not only 
9* 



202 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

have such lives been wasted as regards all valuable human 
ends. They have been worse than wasted as to the very 
end of religious culture to which they might seem adapted. 
The God thus worshipped, has been the frightful chimera 
of a disordered fancy. All imaginable dogmatic atrocities 
have had their birth in these savage cells and dens. Man 
learns to conceive worthily of God only through human 
relations. It is in terms borrowed from these relations 
that the Scriptures teach the fatherhood of God, and 
image the soul's espousal to her Redeemer. It is he who 
lives purely and dutifully in these relations that sees in 
the human the constantly suggestive symbol of the Divine, 
and drinks in perpetually a strengthening, gladdening 
faith in his Father and Saviour. The ascetic, in forfeiting 
the symbol, loses all sense of what it signifies, and finds 
his types for the Divinity in the savage scenes, loathsome 
endurances, and horrible self-tortures, which are his tem- 
ple, his ritual, and his worship. 

Another form of the pietistic impulse is engendered by 
the action of superstitious belief on indolence and apathy. 
This has furnished the rank and file of Christian recluses 
in all ages. The cloisters have been filled for the most 
part by men. and women who might have been stimu- 
lated to useful industry by just views of duty, or would 
have been driven to toil for their subsistence, had not 
their laziness found sanction and support in a false and 
harmful charity. The best thing that these religious re- 
cluses have been wont to do is to vegetate in an ever 
nearer approach to idiocy, their faculties gradually rust- 
ing away by disuse. Probably from the very prayers and 
litanies in which their days drag out their weary length, 
the spiritual element is wholly exhaled at a very early 
period, and the service of the altar becomes as much a 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 203 

mere bodily exercise as that of the refectory. Where, 
however, the appetites are strong, they avenge themselves 
for the violence done to human nature by subduing and 
dishonoring it. Monasticism has been atrociously wronged 
whenever it has been represented as the conscious and 
willing nurse of sensuality. Its discipline has been, for 
the most part, administered by and upon either honest 
and fervent asceties or harmless drones ; and I cannot 
believe, without stronger evidence than the history of the 
Church gives us, that the intent of evil has at any time 
mingled largely with the motives that have led men to 
abjure the living world, which has always offered too 
many facilities for every form of vice to make a retreat 
from it tempting to the viciously disposed. Yet even 
Montalembert, the most eloquent among the eulogists of 
monastic institutions, admits that foul and horrible ex- 
cesses of gluttony, drunkenness, and sensuality of every 
kind, have been not infrequent among the cloistered.* 
And we should expect this ; for idleness and an unoc- 
cupied mind always leave free scope and full sway for 
all the capacity that one has of low appetite and brutal 
passion. Thus it is that many, who began by sincerely 
consecrating a profitless life to God, have passed, almost 
unconsciously, to the opposite camp. 

There remains yet another, the mystic type of pietism, 
of which we cannot speak without profound reverence 
for the pure and noble spirits which it has given to human- 

* See Montalembert, Les Moines oV Occident, Introduction, Chap. vii. After 
speaking of the indignant utterances against monastic abuses put by Dante 
into the mouth of St. Benedict (Paradiso, Canto xxii.), and of the coarse and 
foul portraitures of depravity under the cowl which make up the substance 
of Boccaccio's Decamerone, Montalembert adds: "La corruption monastique 
devint le lieu commun de la satire, en meme temps que la matiere constante 
des dole'ances trop legitimes de toutes les ames pieuses comme des plus 
hautes autorit£s de l'Eglise." 



204 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

ity. Yet even in their case we discern the need of an 
outward sphere of duty to check the morbid reaction from 
a too concentrated gaze upon spiritual realities, from a too 
continuous direct communion with God. There is very 
apt to grow up in such souls an egotism, modest and hum- 
ble indeed, yet engrossing and exacting. They become 
like the hypochondriac invalid, who is perpetually feeling 
his own pulse. Painful and self-accusing introspection 
alternates with devotion, and encroaches upon it more 
and more. Groundless depression blends with the flow of 
pious thought, and imparts to it a tinge of gloom. The 
records of such lives leave a sad impression on the reader, 
and make us feel that, even with the crowning grace of 
sincere devotion Godward, there is much that contributes 
to the strength and beauty of character left undeveloped. 

The centripetal tendency cannot, then, in any of its 
exclusive forms, commend itself to our entire approval, 
even in its religious aspects. 

Let us now mark the working of the centrifugal ten- 
dency when not balanced by the centripetal, — of social 
virtue when not inspired and energized by piety. This 
inquiry is only too timely. It is one of the heresies of 
our day to estimate the traits and gifts of mind and heart 
by their immediate mechanical results ; and piety, because 
its direct acts are not earthward and manward, because it 
does not visibly feed and clothe men, because it does not 
in its express form go down into the arena of strife and 
gain, is struck from the list of utilities, its services deemed 
a waste, its joys a delusion. Yet I maintain that this, 
and this alone, can give strength, permanence, and purity 
to the social virtues, — that the life hidden with God is 
identical with the life that diffuses blessings among men. 
The fountain is fed from secret springs, and, when it leaps 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 205 

and bubbles fresh and clear, indicates a source higher than 
its level. The navigable river, the fall that turns the mill- 
wheel, is made deep and strong by forest-rills that carry 
no freight, by mountain-torrents too wild and vagrant for 
industrial uses. Stop the source, the fountain stagnates 
and dries up. Cut off the rill, the boat is stranded on 
the river's bed. Arrest the torrent, the wheel stands 
still. Equally do what are called the useful virtues 
depend on those which belong to the interior life. 

There is in our day a great deal of professed philan- 
thropy where religious faith and reverence are wanting. 
But did you ever know an undevout philanthropist worthy 
of the name ? These professed friends of their race who 
neglect the peculiar duties of religion are either partial in 
then* charity, warm in some causes of philanthropy and 
indifferent or hostile to others ; or their zeal is flickering, 
their torch a revolving, intermittent light; or else they 
blend with much that is kind and generous a large infu- 
sion of bitterness and rancor, so that out of the same 
mouth proceed blessing and cursing. Without love to 
God, love to man grows languid. What was heart-work 
at the outset soon lapses into tongue-work or hand- work ; 
and as tongue or hand for lack of heart grows weary, it 
either sinks into utter inertness, or, if kept in motion by 
habit or pressure from without, it pursues its routine 
peevishly and fretfully, because reluctantly. There is no 
more pitiable or noxious being than the godless philan- 
thropist. The men who forsake and scorn the altar are 
the very men who make philanthropy a hissing and a by- 
word, who cast reproach on the holiest causes, who thwart 
the sincere benevolence of multitudes that would gladly 
do all they can for their race, who by their denuncia- 
tions and anathemas keep back the sober and self- 



206 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

respecting from fields of effort in which they would re- 
joice to labor. 

We have thus seen that of these two tendencies 
of character neither can be suffered to prevail to the 
exclusion of the other, without injurious results, nay, 
more, without failure of the very end pursued, — the 
mere devotee being dwarfed or distorted in his relig- 
ious development, the mere philanthropist losing his 
capacity of usefulness. Yet before Jesus Christ none 
knew that piety and charity were essential to each other, 
inseparable allies, neither capable of subsisting apart. 
Such was the law of nature, and truly good men had 
lived by this law, yet without knowing it, just as men 
for several thousand years had experienced the phenom- 
ena of the earth's rotation and revolution without any 
conception of them. Christianity is not peculiar in en- 
joining piety, or in inculcating charity ; for both had 
formed a part of the better ethical systems of the ancient 
world. But it was and is peculiar in uniting the two, in 
affirming the one to be dependent on and inseparable 
from the other, and in placing that first which is first in 
the nature and necessity of things, and without which the 
second cannot be. When Jesus Christ announced as the 
first and great commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart," and declared the second, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," to be, not 
separate from it, not independent of it, not the opposite 
pole of duty, but " like unto it," he proclaimed the most 
momentous discovery ever made in moral science, — a 
discovery that bears the same relation to the spiritual 
world which the discovery of universal gravitation bears 
to the material universe. 

You will remember how this union constitutes the key- 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 207 

stone of the New Testament morality, how constantly 
religiqus and social duty are united in the teachings of 
Christ, and how their identity forms the entire burden 
of that tender, loving epistle of St. John. 

But, as Jesus says, the love of God must come first. 
Without it, there may be a certain amount of good-doing, 
under the impulse of transient enthusiasm, from the im- 
itative instinct which makes certain modes of beneficence 
fashionable, or from party spirit, which often confers mate- 
rial relief or comfort in an utterly malignant temper ; but 
there can be no broad, persistent, long-suffering love of 
man. For of those who most need our love, how many 
are there who present in themselves nothing on which it 
can lay hold ! Think you that the first missionaries to 
the Malays, and Hottentots, and New-Zealanders, who 
attested then' love for them by untold sacrifices and suf- 
ferings, saw anything to love in those fierce and truculent 
savages, in those grinning, ape-like negroes, in those can- 
nibals hungering for then" flesh, — in those vile kennels 
and rubbish-heaps of humanity ? No. But as we should 
follow up with our kindest offices a degraded and seem- 
ingly worthless brother of a very dear friend, should look 
on that brother with our friend's eyes, should believe that 
there was in him worth or the capacity of it because our 
friend thought so, and should for our friend's sake take a 
sincere interest in him, so our love to God will reveal to 
us the precious in man however degraded and imbruted, 
will make us love him for God's image in him though it 
be obscured and defaced, and will sustain us in every 
effort and sacrifice that may help to repair the temple in 
ruins, and to cleanse the sacred image from its foul and 
noisome incrustations. 

How perfect is the union of these two principles in the 



208 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

life of Christ, — a life literally in the bosom of the Father, 
a life consecrated in its entireness to loving offices among 
the needy, the suffering, the guilty, the abandoned, — 
the night-watches sequestered from the repose of the toil- 
worn body for the profounder rest of lonely prayer, the 
days so crowded with words and works of mercy that 
some of them of which we can trace the record might 
seem to have been preternaturally lengthened ! Since 
his time, and in his spirit, all the great workers for hu- 
manity have been as fervent in their devotion as they 
have been energetic in their labor of love. No matter in 
what department of philanthropic service, — whether it 
is Howard so engrossed with the prisons that he has no 
time to look at the palaces and cathedrals of Continental 
Europe, or Judson coining his whole noble being into 
labors and sacrifices for benighted Burmah, or Cheverus, 
with refinement and culture that would have graced a 
court, building the fire and making the gruel for the sick 
poor in loathsome Broad-Street cellars, or Charles "Wesley 
pouring forth those sweet redemption-songs whose Sab- 
bath strains echo round the world, or Arnold inaugu- 
rating a new era of Christian education, and imparting 
impulses that will be felt longer than his name will be 
spoken among men, — wherever there is an energy of 
love that thrills through all hearts, and commands uni- 
versal reverence and sympathy, there too is an equal 
energy of piety. Not a throb of kindly feeling pulses for 
a fellow-man, that mounts not first to God, and through 
him descends in blessing. Not a wave of sympathy rolls 
in upon the stricken heart, that flows not first to the 
Majesty on high, thence refluent earthward. Not a cord 
of benign influence is thrown around the degraded and 
the guilty, that has not its attachment and its purchase on 
the eternal throne. 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 209 

II. There is another moral problem, to which I would 
invite your attention, and which will occupy the remain- 
der of the present Lecture. There is at first view an 
irreconcilable antagonism between self-love and benefi- 
cence. Self-love is inevitable ; beneficence is a manifest 
duty. But if we love ourselves, how can we rob our- 
selves of time, reputation, ease, or money for the good of 
others ? If we are beneficent, how can we be otherwise 
than false to that law of our very natures which urges 
upon us a primary reference to our own happiness ? I 
cannot find that this problem was ■ solved by any moralist 
before Christ. Beneficence was indeed inculcated before 
Christ, but as a form of self-renunciation, not as returning 
a revenue to the kind heart and the generous hand. 
Yet here Christ plays a bold stroke. His precepts are 
full of philanthropy. They prescribe the utmost measure 
of toil and sacrifice for humanity. They constrain the 
disciple to call nothing his own which others really need, 
— to hold all that he has subject to perpetual drafts from 
those who can claim his sympathy. Yet Christ is so far 
from dishonoring and denouncing self-love, that he cher- 
ishes it without imposing or suggesting a limit to it, nay, 
makes the cherishing of it a duty and a measure of the 
seemingly antagonistic duty, implying that, the more we 
love ourselves, the greater will be the amount of the good 
we do to others. His fundamental law for the social life 
stretches the uniting wire between these opposite poles, 
and transmits from each to the other the current of per- 
sonal and social obligation, making duty interest, and 
interest duty. The precept, " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself," is simply absurd, if the imagined antago- 
nism is real. But if these two principles, in form mutu- 
ally hostile, are in fact kindred and mutually convertible, 



210 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

so that each does the other's work, it must be by means 
of springs and wheels which underlie them both and the 
whole fabric of society, and which are kept in perpet- 
ual tension and motion by an omnipresent providence. 
Either this coincidence of self-love and beneficence is a 
law of nature, or it is a contradiction in terms and an im- 
possibility in action. Let us consider how far it is a law 
of nature. 

Look, first, at international relations. Unenlightened 
national self-love dictates war on the most trivial pretexts, 
quick resentment, prompt revenge, bold aggression, the 
preying of the strong upon the feeble. But if history 
has taught any lesson, it has taught the inexpediency and 
folly of needless war, even when most successful, and the 
expediency of peace at all sacrifices, and of mutual good 
offices among the nations. Nor has the lesson failed of 
reception. Though peculiar circumstances have led, within 
the lifetime of the present generation, to two of the great- 
est international wars on record, and though the grand 
police-movement of our government for the suppression 
and punishment of treason has assumed the form of a 
gigantic war, a change has already taken place in the 
policy of the civilized world. There have been numerous 
instances, of late years, in which controversies that half 
a century ago could have been settled only by armies 
have been adjusted by peaceful negotiation or arbitration ; 
and it is distinctly seen on all hands that a generous, for- 
bearing, long-suffering course in cases of international 
controversy is alone consistent with the welfare and pro- 
gress of a state. 

A similar change has taken place in the commercial 
relations of the civilized world. In the ignorant infancy 
of modern commerce the reigning doctrine was, that the 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 211 

surplus of the specie imported over that exported deter- 
mined the balance of trade in favor of a nation, so that by 
any specific commercial arrangement one party must be 
the gainer, the other the loser. Thus the sole effort of 
diplomatists was to outwit one another, and to throw dust 
into one another's eyes ; and as to mercantile matters, 
nations occupied a position of mutual antagonism, each 
looking for gain only at the expense of the other. This 
notion is now entirely exploded, and the principle is fully 
established, that between two nations no commercial 
arrangement can be advantageous to one party which is 
not so to both, that virtual reciprocity (which often differs 
widely, as in some instances our country has learned to 
its cost, from literal reciprocity) is the true basis of trea- 
ties, and that the enhanced prosperity of any one of the 
family of nations only offers an enlarged market for the 
industry and an expanded scope for the commerce of every 
other. Thus, though commerce seems an intensely selfish 
transaction, it is now girdling the earth with the zone of 
common interest, mutual good-will, and reciprocal help- 
fulness. 

Among members of the same community I know of 
nothing that illustrates the concurrent tendency and har- 
monious working of self-love and mutual benevolence so 
strongly and beautifully as the system of insurance. At 
first thought, the appeal to the self-love of the uninjured 
as a resource against calamity might seem the height of 
absurdity, and the inscription, "Bear ye one another's 
burdens," placed over the office of a joint-stock company, 
might look like bitter irony. Yet what but such an 
appeal is the advertisement of an insurance company? 
What more fitting motto could an insurance office bear ? 
This method of selfish benevolence, of philanthropic self- 



212 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

love, is already applied to the risks of fire, storm, and 
shipwreck, of sickness and death, and the extension of it 
to debts, contracts, suretyships, and other transactions in 
which a crushingly heavy burden is often thrown upon an 
individual, has been hopefully projected, so that in due 
time every calamity which can have its force broken by 
division will be thus dispersed by the beneficent working 
of pure self-love, — by a system into which no man enters 
except for his own benefit, yet into which no man can 
enter without becoming a public benefactor. This kindly 
agency, by which disasters that would overwhelm and 
ruin the individual are drawn off and scattered over a 
whole community with a pressure which none can seri- 
ously feel, might remind one of what takes place in a 
thunder-storm, when every twig of every tree and every 
angle of every moistened roof helps to lead harmlessly 
to the ground the electric force which, discharged at any 
one point, would deal desolation and death. 

We may trace this same harmony between self-love 
and benevolence in the relations and intercourse of ordi- 
nary life. We have heard a great deal at times — I 
think that the phraseology has grown obsolete now, but it 
was rife when the Carlylese patois used to be spoken in 
cultivated circles — about whole men, and the necessity 
of every man's being a whole man, in himself complete, 
self-sufficing, and independent. There never was such a 
man, and never will be ; and were there such a man, he 
would be as fair a specimen of humanity as one would be 
as to his physical nature who lacked hands, or feet, or 
even head. We are by nature the complements of one 
another. We cannot help leaning and depending on one 
another. We are like trees in a forest, each sheltered 
and fostered by its neighbor-trees, and liable to speedy 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 213 

blighting when transplanted to a solitary exposure. Our 
social natures are as truly a part of themselves as our 
physical natures; our affections, as our appetites; our 
domestic and civil relations, as our subjection to the laws 
of matter and of mind. The man whom we term selfish 
consults the needs of only an insignificant fraction of him- 
self. The self-seeker (so called) leads a life of perpetual 
self-sacrifice and self-denial. He alone who benefits his 
neighbor does well for himself. He alone who does good 
gets good. He alone who makes the world the happier 
and the better by his living in it, becomes happier and 
better by living in it. 

Thus we see that in the essential constitution of nations, 
communities, and the individual soul, self-love and mutual 
benevolence, so far from being antagonistic principles, are 
in perfect harmony, verifying the words of St. Paul, 
" The members, being many, are one body ; and whether 
one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one 
member be honored, all the members rejoice WTLth it." 

You will not misunderstand me with reference to this 
matter. I by no means represent selfishness as a motive 
to benevolence ; nor are those outwardly kind acts which 
are performed at the bidding of selfishness to be regarded 
as benevolent. Yet the highest benevolence is the high- 
est self-love. Let me take a case familiar no doubt to 
some of my hearers, that of the missionary Boardman, 
and let me trace rapidly his career. He leaves the most 
flattering prospects near his native home. He crosses 
more than half the globe to toil for a race w^hich proffers 
no hold on his aesthetic sensibilities, but whose only claim 
is its ignorance and wretchedness. He seeks out scattered 
hamlets in the almost impenetrable jungles and mountain- 
clefts of Burmah, and crosses swollen torrents, arid 



214 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

wastes, and rocky passes hardly trodden but by beasts of 
prey. His vigorous frame yields to perpetual and unrest- 
ing labor. The hectic flush of approaching death deepens 
day by day, but he pauses not on his errands of mercy. 
His limbs refuse their office; still, "borne of four," like 
the paralytic in the Gospel, he carries from village to vil- 
lage the message of redeeming love. With the last sands 
of his life there is still a distant group of converted savages 
waiting to be baptized into the Christian fold, and through 
incredible fatigue he presses on to meet them,. He pre- 
sides at the service, welcomes the proselytes to his own 
blessed faith, pours forth for them his fervent exhortations 
and the prayers so soon to be merged in the worship of 
the heavenly temple. He dies conqueror on the blood- 
less field, the laurels of man's noblest victory crowning 
his fevered brow, and encircling his memory with a glory 
that time can never efface. Now in all this there was no 
self-renunciation, but an enlarged and enlightened self- 
love, — the love of a self complete and perfect, — of a 
self in those relations with universal humanity for which 
we are all created and destined, — of the immortal self 
which seizes its heavenly birthright, which knows the 
steps by which it is to mount on high, which cannot be 
content with any inferior and transient good while the 
supreme and everlasting good is within its reach. 

My argument is this : I am attempting to illustrate the 
identity of Christianity wi+h the religion of nature, and 
thus to prove that Christianity can have had no other au- 
thor than the Author of nature. Nations, communities, 
individual men, only in these latter days are beginning 
to perceive the coincidence of self-love with benevolence, 
of the individual good with the general good. So far as 
observation and reasoning are concerned, it is wholly a 



CHRISTIAN MORALITY. 215 

discovery of modern times ; but it is a discovery of what 
always was and must ever be, — of what lies in the essen- 
tial constitution of human nature and society. Far back 
in barbarous antiquity this coincidence is dimly and par- 
tially shadowed in the Pentateuch. In the teachings of 
Jesus Christ it is made the basis of social morality, and 
underlies his entire code of duty between man and man. 
So many centuries before human philosophy and conscious 
experience began to verify this truth, it can have been 
derived only by revelation from Him who knew from the 
beginning what is in man. 



LECTURE XI. 

THE NATURAL KELIGION OF THE STATE. 

As my course approaches its termination, I am op- 
pressed by the multitude of topics that claim our atten- 
tion, or would reward our inquiry. Among these I have 
chosen for the present Lecture the Natural Religion of 
the State, — of government, of man's political relations. 
In pursuance of the plan which I announced in my first 
Lecture, and have kept steadily in view, I shall attempt 
to legitimate on grounds of natural right the foundation- 
principles of political society propounded by revelation. 
In announcing the subject of this evening, I can hardly 
need to say that I am among those who find in the Bible 
not only the way out of this world, but the way in it, — 
not only preparation for a higher sphere of being, but the 
principles on which alone individual, domestic, social, and 
national life can be so ordered upon the earth as to secure 
the maximum of benefit and happiness. 

It is among the discoveries of modern botanists, that the 
plant is built up solely by the multiplication of primitive 
cells, which contain in their microscopic proportions the 
characteristic properties of the completed organism. With 
reference to human society a similar discovery was an- 
nounced in the Decalogue, and confirmed by Jesus 
Christ. I refer to the precept, " Honor thy father and 
thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which 
the Lord thy God giveth thee." This last clause, a 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 217 

moment's examination will show you, is not the promise 
of a long life to a good son, but of long national life to a 
nation of good sons. The Decalogue is addressed to the 
people taken collectively, — " Hear, O Israel " ; and this 
precept denotes, u Do you, as a people, cultivate filial 
reverence and piety, that you may long live in prosperity 
in your land." The command in itself is not strange ; 
but the announcement in connection with it of so recon- 
dite, yet so essential a maxim of political philosophy, — 
a truth fundamental indeed, yet hardly recognized even 
now, — indicates a wisdom far beyond that rude age and 
people, and certainly gives no slight color of probability to 
the belief that God spake those words which have come 
down to us as the law given on Mount Sinai. Here then 
is the foundation-truth of the politico-religious system of 
the Bible. Let us see how far it is verified in the ex- 
perience of mankind. 

The state is but an aggregation of smaller communi- 
ties ; and they are but aggregations of the little groups of 
human beings that dwell in separate homes. The true 
organization of the state is analogous to that of the family. 
The administration of both is in theory alike paternal ; its 
ends are protection and order. The duties of the citizen 
correspond to those of the child. They are submission 
and obedience, with no other limits than those which 
should restrain the child, namely, the carefully considered 
voice of conscience and the express law of God. The 
child may not commit theft or utter falsehood at the 
parent's command ; but within the entire range of things 
not absolutely wrong he is bound to obedience, however 
unpalatable or irksome. In like manner, the citizen may 
not commit what he knows to be morally wrong at the 
bidding of the state ; but there is no extent to which, 
10 



218 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

within the limits of the right, he is not bound to act in 
opposition to his own wish, judgment, and interest, for the 
sake of loyalty to the government and order in the state. 
Nay, more, as the child, if his conscience will not let him 
obey his parent, is bound to yield to the penalty of dis- 
obedience, and to honor by his submission and suffering 
the parental authority whose command conflicts for the 
moment with a higher obligation, so the only safe rule for 
the citizen inhibited by an enlightened conscience from 
complying with the requisition of the state is for him to 
accept its penalty, — a rule commended to us by apostolic 
example, and by the sacrifice and suffering of the all-per- 
fect Saviour. 

Nor is our strictly filial relation to government modified 
by republican institutions, under which each man holds 
a portion of the sovereignty. The free citizen's acts of 
sovereignty are few, simple, and definite. They are con- 
fined to his exercise of the right of suffrage, his appropri- 
ation of the means requisite to enable him to exercise that 
right intelligently, and his free expression of opinion as to 
public men and measures. In everything else he is as 
much a subject bound to implicit obedience as if he were 
under a despotism. True, it demands a peculiarly clear 
moral discernment and active moral sense for one to be 
alternately sovereign and subject, — parent and child in 
the great national family. Therefore, for the citizens of a 
republic is the filial piety enjoined in the commandment 
I have cited pre-eminently the natural religion of the 
state ; for citizens will be for the most part what they 
have been trained to be as children. You probably never 
knew a demagogue, a factious, brawling politician, one 
who despised laws and loved to defame rulers, who was 
not a stubborn son, a weariness to his father, and a per- 
petual grief to his mother. 






THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 219 

Our Puritan ancestors and the colonists from the Old 
World in general brought to our shores the ancient no- 
tions of rigid family discipline. Unquestioning obedience 
was the law and the habit of their households. Way- 
ward children fared worse with the early magistrates of 
N^w England than the majority of thieves and murderers 
fare now ; for filial contumacy or irreverence was then 
regarded as " an iniquity to be punished by the judges." 
Thence sprang that pervading spirit of order, which in 
the last century survived the breaking up of old institu- 
tions, winch for the most part quietly awaited the forma- 
tion of our State and national governments, and then 
peacefully transferred its former allegiance to the newly 
constituted authorities. It was home-born habits alone 
that kept the nation out of the whirlpool of anarchy dur- 
ing the Revolutionary conflict, when the State govern- 
ments really had very little power, nay, an existence so 
precarious that any extensive outbreaking of the mob- 
spirit would have crushed them. And had not the sol- 
diers of the Revolution been for the most part trained in 
well-ordered families, they never would have laid down 
their arms, unpaid except in what they deemed worth- 
less paper, but would have levied their hard-earned wages 
on the goods of the unarmed, and, not suffering them- 
selves to be foiled by the impregnable virtue of their com- 
mander-in-chief, would have elevated some unscrupulous 
soldier of fortune to the headship of a military despotism. 

The condition of things has sadly changed within the 
lifetime of the present generation. Laws have been per- 
petually nullified. Our legislative halls have often wit- 
nessed outrages that would disgrace an arena of prize- 
fighters. Mobs have not infrequently taken the law 
into their own hands, and have been abetted in their 



220 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

violence by men of conspicuous social and political stand- 
ing. And am I not justified in saying that such disorders 
have sprung from lax domestic discipline, — from homes 
where children have borne sway, and their parents have 
served them ? It was homes organized and governed after 
the divinely prescribed pattern that alone made a repub- 
lic possible on this Western Continent; and if the old 
domestic regime is to be permanently reversed, if the 
elder are to serve the younger, if the whims of childhood 
and the caprices of youth, instead of the wisdom of mature 
experience, are to govern our families, the days of our 
republic are numbered, and are drawing to a close. Un- 
disciplined homes will throw the state into anarchy ; and 
the world will have to wait for a successful republican 
experiment till there shall be a nation that obeys the 
precept, and can claim the promise, of the fifth command- 
ment of the Decalogue. 

In this connection permit me to say a word of the 
present rebellion. The conflict is not between govern- 
ment and government, but between anarchy and order. 
Slavery, its salient cause, inflicts no evil so great as in 
subverting the natural order of the family, — in making 
children despots at the very age when they should be 
learning lessons of submission and obedience. A slave- 
holding population cannot be the nursery of good sub- 
jects. The present outbreak had its preparation and 
prophecy, first, in domestic insubordination, then and 
and thence in those habits of private revenge and lawless 
violence which were sapping the foundations of society, 
and which have only reached their necessary and legiti- 
mate issue in a war aimed nominally against the authority 
of the United States, but virtually against the funda- 
mental principles of all government and all social order. 






THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 221 

To recapitulate what has been said, government and 
social order are a necessity of communities and nations. 
God has provided for the existence of government and 
order in the essential and natural duties, in the primal 
and natural law, of the filial relation, under which every 
child that obeys the very instinct of a child's nature 
becomes of necessity a loyal and orderly subject. Far 
back in the very rudest antiquity, — long before men 
could have begun to philosophize on their relations or on 
the analogy between the family and the state, — we find 
this fundamental, vital law of the state promulgated in a 
commandment that purports to have come directly from 
God. Can we resist the belief, that the announcement of 
a truth so manifestly beyond the age and people in which 
we find it was actually made by Him ? 

But while filial obedience alone can train worthy sub- 
jects for the state, there are yet other aspects in which 
government depends on the home-life, and is sustained by 
the family relation, so that, for a homeless community, 
anarchy or despotism would be the alternative. To an 
incalculable degree the home-instinct supplies the place 
of law, supersedes the harsher ministries of government, 
prevents crime, anticipates want, divides and lightens 
burdens which else no public organization could bear. 
The gravitation toward home is in every nation a stronger 
force than its police and armies are or can be, and accom- 
plishes many purposes of prime importance which they 
could in no way fulfil. The few homeless members of a 
community are of immeasurably more charge, burden, 
and peril to its constituted authorities, than the over- 
whelming majority that have homes. 

I called the tendency to domestic life the home-instinct; 



222 CHRISTIANITY THE EELIGION OF NATURE. 

for it is not -the result of reason, or a choice from inter- 
ested motives, and it has the same kind of power over the 
human will that the migratory instinct exerts upon the 
wings of a bird. When we look at the matter abstractly, 
homes are not necessary. We can conceive of life as 
existing independently of them. The conjugal and pa- 
rental relations might be owned and kept sacred in the 
gregarious life which the socialists would have us lead. 
It has been, also, plausibly — though, I think, not without 
a latent sophistry — maintained, and is pretty generally 
believed, that, under a socialistic regime, there would be 
not only a more equable distribution, but a more profuse 
creation, of the elements of material comfort and enjoy- 
ment than under the institution of separate families. Yet 
under all forms and degrees of culture there is this irre- 
sistible tendency to a separate abode for each several 
family, — a latent consciousness, almost universal, that 
home can be surrendered only at an inconceivable sacri- 
fice of all that is most loved and enjoyed. 

By this instinct man is brought into analogy with the 
entire system of the universe. In the outward creation 
every object is at once a centre and a satellite. The sun, 
with circling worlds revolving around it, itself revolves 
around a centre of unnumbered systems. The planets, 
secondaries to the sun, are primaries to their moons. 
Every existence, every particle of matter, itself drawn by 
mighty attractions, is equally a centre of attractive force 
to surrounding objects. In human society almost all are 
moving in circumferences around distant centres, — all 
are so when compared in importance and dignity with 
the Supreme Being. But in his home every human be- 
ing is himself a centre, — the parent, of reverence ; the 
child, of love ; the dependent, of tender care. Here the 



1 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 223 

little become great, the obscure are clothed with honor. 
Those made to feel their insignificance everywhere else 
are important here. Those whose out-of-door life seems 
a blank have here a life on which others hang with 
interest. Each is here looked upon, in some measure, 
with a distinguishing regard, and all that there is in him 
or of him is held at its full value. 

Cast your eye over a miscellaneous street group in 
some portion of your city not considered as peculiarly 
genteel. You see there many of no note in the world's 
esteem, cumberers of the ground, burdens on reluctant 
charity, drones in the great hive, pestilential elements in 
the lower strata of society. Yet there is one spot — 
mean and rude it may be — where the most squalid of 
that group is held in regard, perhaps in the same devoted 
affection that renders our homes happy. There is a wife, 
who has made her slender preparations for his evening 
comfort. There are children, who greet him by the most 
endearing of names, and who would not forsake his guar- 
dianship for the most affluent abode. He is a prince in 
his little empire, and its security and love make large 
amends to him for the toil and buffeting of his despised 
walk among men. Is he vicious, nay, a very Ishmael in 
his vices, his hand against every man and every man's 
hand against him ? Still there are those here who will 
cover his failings, temporize with his infirmities, remember 
fondly his better days, and never yield up the long- 
deferred hope of better days to come. Is the dwelling 
the abode of common vices and of mutual strife ? Still 
it is not always so. There are seasons of reconciliation, 
confidence, enjoyment, hope. Their journey through the 
desert brings them now and then to an oasis, though it be 
of scanty green and brief blossoming. 



224 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

Look, again, at a cluster of children in some poor 
neighborhood. You will see those in whom, with the 
kindest heart, you cannot feel an individual interest, — 
the stupid, the ill-mannered, the squalidly apparelled, the 
misshapen. Yet among them all you may not mark a 
single unhappy face, and the most ragged and uncouth 
may have no more in look or manner to excite your pity 
than the best-conditioned. And why? Each of them 
has a home, and to him it has all the elements of a home. 
Each of them has a close and dear place in the hearts 
of one little circle. On that coarse and patched garment 
the mother has toiled lovingly, and has appended to it 
some hoarded remnant of obsolete finery, and to hef eye 
it is not uncomely. The stupidity of this child is regarded 
at home as a prematurely meek and quiet spirit ; the bois- 
terous rudeness of that child as the exuberance of innocent 
mirthfulness. The deformed boy has a little sister who 
thinks him beautiful, and in all domestic arrangements and 
festivities his is the sunny side, the Benjamin's portion. 

I have said enough for my purpose, which is to illus- 
trate, not the blessedness of home, but its connection with 
the security and permanence of political institutions, — its 
agency in extending protection, care, and comfort to whole 
classes of persons, who else would be an unmanageable 
burden on the institutions of society, an intolerable, tur- 
bulent, and pestilential mass of pauperism and crime. 

The malign action of whatever impairs the sacredness 
of home may be seen in the history of the decline and 
fall of the Roman empire. In the best days of the Re- 
public the standard of domestic virtue was singularly pure 
and high for a heathen nation, 1 and the state drew health, 

1 " Repudium inter uxorem et virum, a condita urbe usque ad vicesimum 
et quingentesimum annum nullum intercessit." — Valerius Maximus, II. 1, § 4. 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 225 

vigor, and culminating power from frugal and well- 
ordered homes. In the time of the earlier Emperors the 
home-life of Rome in its profligacy distances description, 
and but for accumulated evidence would transcend belief. 
The facility of divorce left the wife not a day's security 
in her own dwelling, 1 and abandoned her children to a 
succession of step-mothers, whose very name became hate- 
ful from its identification with all fiendish forms of malice 
and cruelty. The father oftener bequeathed his estate to 
the last intriguing woman who had gained ascendency 
over his dotage, or to some sycophantic legacy-hunter, 

1 It" will not be forgotten here that Cicero, whose standard of morality was 
by no means low for his time, repudiated his wife Terentia to marry a rich 
heiress, his own ward, and this, as his confidential and devotedly attached 
freedman Tiro asserted, in order to obtain means to pay his debts ; and that 
he shortly afterward repudiated this new wife because she did not sympa- 
thize with him in grief for the death of his daughter. In like manner, Paulus 
^milius — certainly a man of rare merit — repudiated his young and virtu- 
ous wife for no assigned or known cause, simply saying, " My shoes are new, 
and well made, yet I must change them ; but none of you can tell where they 
pinch me." Divorces bona gratia, sine ulla querela, and sine causa are referred 
to familiarly, as of every-day occurrence ; and the divortium bona gratia is rec- 
ognized as legal in the Pandect. Wives in process of time assumed, by gen- 
eral consent, and without legal hinderance, the same freedom from permanent 
. matrimonial bonds which had been conceded to husbands. In attestation of 
this, it may be sufficient to cite the following well-known passage from Sen- 
eca: " Numquid jam ulla repudio erubescit, postquam illustres quaedam ac 
nobiles feminse, non consulum numero, sed maritorum, annos suos computant? 
et exeunt matrimonii causa, nubunt repudii ? Tarn diu illud timebatur, quam 
diu rarum erat; quia vero nulla sine divortio acta sunt, quod saepe audiebant, 
facere didicerunt." — Be Benejiciis, III. 16. 

This subject is ably treated by Troplong, De V Influence du Christianisme 
sur le Droit Civil des Romains. Troplong's treatise, otherwise admirable, 
evinces an occasional carelessness in the use of citations from classical au- 
thorities. Thus he writes (p. 206), "Mecene £tait ce'lebre par ses mille 
mariages et ses divorces quotidiens," and quotes, concerning Maecenas, two 
passages from Seneca, " Qui uxorem millies duxit," and " Quotidiana re- 
pudia," but neglects to add to the first of these citations, " quum unam 
habuerit." Maecenas, though a gross sensualist, had but one wife, and Sen- 
eca refers to the daily quarrels and reconciliations between him and his wife. 
10* O 



226 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

than to his rightful heirs, who inherited nothing but his 
depravity. The foulest of now nameless vices ran riot in 
the dwellings of the rich, while the poor were fed mainly 
by largesses bestowed for their complicity in public crime, 
and were trained to ferocity by gladiatorial shows and by 
the conflicts of men with savage beasts. All manly attri- 
butes died out of the heart of the nation, which had as 
little capacity of being fitly governed as its worst tyrants 
had of discreet and virtuous rule. The bonds of society 
became, like those of the family, a rope of sand. The 
hordes of Northern barbarians, whose strength had been 
compacted by those very domestic virtues — rude, yet 
genuine — which the corrupt civilization of the Empire 
had destroyed, found a people already hopelessly disinte- 
grated, and thus their easy prey. 

Similar lessons come to us from the modern history of 
France. From the age of Louis XIV. to the fall of the 
monarchy, gross licentiousness, brutalizing the court of 
every sovereign but the last, had descended through all 
grades of society, had obliterated the sanctity and dissolved 
the bonds of domestic life, and produced a condition which 
might remind us of St. Paul's words hi describing the 
Gentiles of his day, — "without natural affection." The 
atheistical philosophy of the eighteenth century struck the 
axe at the root of whatever lingering belief or principle 
remonstrated against abounding corruption. Thus were 
trained, energized, maddened, the high-priests of the guil- 
lotine, — the men at who$e bidding murder became law, 
innocence crime, religion felony, the rivers torrents of 
blood. 

In more recent times the atheistical element, still intol- 
erant of the divine order of the household, has largely 
crystallized into socialism, has had the phalanstery for its 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 227 

seminary, and the phalanx for its army of propagandism ; 
and in the later French revolutions every one knows how 
prominent and decisive a part has been borne by socialism, 
which has repeatedly heaved society from its base, and 
threatened to whelm the nation in formless anarchy. In 
England and in our own country, — thanks to the Anglo- 
Saxon element of common sense, and, still more, thanks 
to the large infusion of Christian faith and principle, — 
the great experiments of socialism have been made chiefly 
on paper, and have cost only the printing ; while the 
overt attempts to realize them have been too brief and 
of too limited extent to make their failure, or even their 
ephemeral existence, a matter of general notoriety. 

Christianity attests its claim to be regarded as the re- 
ligion of nature by cherishing, educating, and elevating 
the home-instinct. Alone of all religious systems, it 
fences the conjugal relation with inviolable sanctity. Its 
Founder recognized and honored the ties of kindred and 
of a common home. His presence blessed the marriage 
festival ; his tears fell in sympathy with the bereaved 
household ; and in his miracles he reunited broken fam- 
ilies, and gave back the dead to the embrace of parents 
and of sisters. Wherever his religion is in the ascendant, 
in each little republic dwelling under the same roof are 
shaped in strength and beauty pillars of the state, on 
which the fabric of the public weal may rest securely, and 
may be built up into an ever closer conformity to the 
divine order of the heavenly commonwealth. 

But the state needs more than stability. Stable as 
against misrule and anarchy, it should be so organized, 
governed, and energized, as to promote the progressive 
civilization of its members. To this progressive civiliza- 



228 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

tion, its hinderances from the sources usually regarded 
as its fountains, and its dependence for ultimate reali- 
zation on certain principles of natural religion revealed 
and embodied in Christianity, I ask your attention in the 
remainder of this Lecture. 

To civilize a man literally denotes to make him a cit- 
izen ; that is, not merely to make him a voter who can be 
bribed, cajoled, or threatened to give a suffrage which has 
from his hand no more significance than it would have 
from the mouth of a dog, but to endow him with such 
traits of character and to environ him with such surround- 
ings as shall enable him to enjoy all the privileges and to 
discharge all the duties of a citizen. The civilization of a 
people implies the multiplication of such citizens, — the 
extension of such traits of character and such privileges 
to the greatest possible number. Now in this sense there 
is no civilized nation upon the earth. In our own State, 
which approaches as nearly to that standard as any por- 
tion of the world, there is probably cast every year as 
large a number of unintelligent and irresponsible votes, 
as of votes proceeding from men who know the impor- 
tance and feel the solemnity of the act ; and what multi- 
tudes have we, who stand in no relation of mutual benefit 
to surrounding society, who neither receive nor impart 
other than harmful influences, and who, though not ostra- 
cized by the law, are as veritable pariahs as if they were 
recognized as an inferior and unprivileged caste ! 

Among the reputed criteria and means of civilization 
I would first name the increase of national wealth. This, 
if not connected with a diffusion equally rapid, is detri- 
mental to the progress of civilization. It is, however, the 
natural tendency of wealth to increase without diffusion. 
Accessions of wealth necessarily come first into the hands 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 229 

of capitalists, and chiefly into those of large capitalists ; 
and if there be no active moral principle to produce a dif- 
ferent result, capital by its increase and concentration gets 
a more absolute control over the labor-market, and can 
dictate its own terms to the laborer. Moreover, experi- 
ence has shown (and there are intrinsic reasons for it 
which it would require more time than I have now at my 
command to state in full) that with the growth of na- 
tional wealth the rate of profits declines ; and this decline 
is fatal to smaller capitalists, distances them in the compe- 
tition for gain, impoverishes them, and throws them back 
into the ranks of labor. Great Britain has become the 
richest country in the world, but has declined in whatever 
the general diffusion of wealth can contribute to civiliza- 
tion, in proportion as it has grown rich. The landed prop- 
erty of England and Scotland is owned by hardly more 
than one third of the number of proprietors that possessed 
the soil at the beginning of the present century. Small es- 
tates are fast becoming extinct, and tenancies are merged 
in sheep-walks that sustain and employ not a tithe of their 
former inhabitants, and in immense farms, on which the 
children of the former owners or occupants have sunk in 
part into serfdom, while still larger numbers of them have 
been driven to the manufacturing towns, where their la- 
bor is often compensated just above the starvation-point. 
Cottage fires have been extinguished by thousands, and 
the ejected peasantry are thrown into the labor-market, to 
reduce still lower, if possible, the pittance of the toiling 
masses, or to swell the constantly growing multitudes 
dependent on public alms, who have constituted in some 
years no less than one sixth part of the entire population. 
"Now wealth must and will increase, and its growth is in 
itself an object of desire ; for it is the potential means of 



230 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

added comfort and privilege to all classes and every mem- 
ber of society. Yet in order to make it the actual means 
of the general good, there must be a law of distribution, 
— a law which can never be arbitrarily enacted, but 
must be imposed, if imposed at all, by moral, spiritual 
forces. 

Another alleged criterion and agent of civilization is 
industrial development by means of machinery and the 
division of labor. As I showed you in a former Lecture, 
this must ultimately redound to the benefit — to the 
improvement and elevation — of the laborer; but not 
in and of itself. Its immediate tendency is in the op- 
posite direction. With the same amount of early culture 
and the same hours of labor, a man is less of a man in 
intelligence, range of ideas, and scope of activity, when 
he makes a twentieth part of a pin, than if he made the 
whole pin, — when he merely watches a set of spindles or 
mends a web, than if he took the wool or cotton home 
and brought the finished cloth to market. Improvements 
in machinery tend of themselves to make the operative 
less and less a discretionary agent, more and more a mere 
mechanical force ; and from authentic testimony before 
the English Parliament we might hesitate whether to 
prefer the civilization of the Malays and Hottentots, or 
that of which some dark vestiges yet remain in the fac- 
tories and collieries of Great Britain. Now these improve 
ments are inevitable, and are destined to be of immeas- 
urable value to all classes and conditions of people ; yet 
not without a moral, spiritual direction, which shall secure 
the universal diffusion, not only of the comforts of life 
which they multiply and cheapen, but equally of the time 
which they save, of the leisure for nobler purposes than 
handcraft which God proffers to the whole race through 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 231 

the mechanical powers and scientific resources placed by 
his providence at their command. 

National strength, in the common and belligerent accep- 
tation of the term, is also a false criterion of civilization. 
Of nations considered as physical forces, that is the strong- 
est in which the individual will has the least scope, — in 
which authority is centralized, and the people can be 
moved in masses. Armies represent a nation's brute 
strength, and, except in a cause that vitally concerns the 
whole people, armies can be best sustained and recruited 
where the people have the least self-respect, the scantiest 
means of livelihood, and the lowest standard of home-com- 
fort. In our present rebellion, even with the strongest ar- 
ray of patriotic feeling on the side of the Constitution and 
the Union, the South, with its much smaller population, 
was long able to cope with the Northern States on nearly 
equal terms, and has yielded to our superior resources with 
a slowness which we could not have anticipated, solely 
because slavery, by impoverishing and degrading the im- 
mense majority of the white inhabitants, has furnished a 
preponderantly large supply of the materials of which 
armies are best constituted, — men whose nature it is to 
yield to strong wills, and to make of themselves a mere 
physical force in the hands of their leaders. The diffusion 
of political power undoubtedly impairs a nation's strength, 
whether for aggression or for defence : but it tends of ne- 
cessity to raise a people equally above the purpose of ag- 
gression and the need of defence. This diffused power, — 
the power of general intelligence, civic and personal vir- 
tue, and enlightened public opinion, — which is the result 
of moral causes alone, is at once the effect, the cause, and 
the criterion of progressive civilization. 

Knowledge claims to be, but is not necessarily, a civiliz- 



232 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

ing agent. When increased and not diffused, it only ag- 
gravates social inequality, and puts into the hands of the 
few advantages which they can employ against the many. 
Thus the Egyptian priests at a very early epoch had the 
monopoly of nearly all the science and knowledge of 
the world, and they were thereby enabled to play at will 
on the credulity of the people, and to extort wealth, 
power, and influence from their superstitious fears. In 
all modern history, there have been no institutions of 
learning so exclusive as the two great English Univer- 
sities. Sustained by the accumulated gifts of many gen- 
erations, yet till within the last six or eight years closed 
against all Dissenters, — virtually closed, too, against all 
except the sons or proteges of the rich and the noble (for 
their eleemosynary foundations receive beneficiaries chiefly 
through aristocratic nomination or influence), — they have 
cast a shadow broader than their light, have thrust back 
from the heights of knowledge more than they have 
helped to scale them, have widened the distance between 
those of patrician and those of plebeian birth, and thus 
have tended to perpetuate those glaring contrasts in 
" society, the reduction of which is a prime aim and crite- 
rion of civilization. Knowledge is too vast a power, and 
too prolific a source of power, to be safely centralized or 
made exclusive property. It becomes a social blessing 
only when its avenues are freely opened, its facilities mul- 
tiplied, its attainments placed within the reach of every 
determined, vigorous and persevering seeker. 

This review of the reputed sources and means of civ- 
ilization authorizes the assertion, that the process of civil- 
ization consists, not in the accumulation of any good or 
of all goods, but in the placing of all or of any within the 
reach of the great body of citizens. We now ask, What 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 233 

is the principle of diffusion on which the hope of the race 
must rely ? Whence springs the desire to diffuse, the 
forethought of members of the body politic for one an- 
other, the will and effort to throw into a common stock 
any and every class of advantages, material, intellectual, 
and moral ? It springs from the sentiment and spirit of 
universal brotherhood, — from the philanthropy which 
cannot have without imparting, which deems the unshared 
gift unblessed. Still more, this sentiment and spirit must 
have a religious basis in the great truths of the fatherhood 
of God and the immortality of man. These alone authen- 
ticate rights on the one hand, and establish duties on the 
other. There is no earthly claim which the straitened and 
depressed can proffer. There is no earthly force that can 
unclench the grasp of monopoly, dissolve the close cor- 
poration of exclusive privilege, and throw wide the ave- 
nues of competition for all who will enter the lists. 

Equality of right and privilege is utterly impossible on 
anti-religious or non-religious ground. No matter how 
liberal the institutions of government may be in name, 
they are liberal in their working, and in the intent of their 
workers, only when they are pervaded and energized by 
a religious faith in God and heaven. On no other ground 
is there any reason why they should be liberal. Take 
away men's common parentage and common destiny, — 
lop off from the column of human existence its base and its 
capital, — you leave men with nothing in common, with 
no points of union or of sympathy. They diverge widely 
from very birth ; they differ greatly from one another in 
the outside of existence ; they come together only beyond 
the grave. If they are not traced from a common Father 
and to a common destiny, then these earthly differences 
are all in all, and they lay a fair and just foundation 



234 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

for the encroachments and extortions of the richer and 
stronger, and for the abject, brute-like submission of the 
poorer and weaker. Unless mankind be one family in 
origin and destiny, might is right, selfishness is duty ; 
society has no bond, imposes no mutual obligations ; and 
the whole community naturally and necessarily divides 
itself into the two great classes of the preying and the 
preyed upon. 

The unbeliever, then, though he style himself a repub- 
lican, is such a friend to republican institutions as Sam- 
son was to the congregated nobles of Philistia. His hands 
grasp the pillars of Freedom's temple, but it is to tear 
them from their base, and to bury the structure and 
its inmates in common ruin. France tried the experi- 
ment ; and never in the history of the race were human 
rights so outrageously violated, freedom go utterly sub- 
verted, man so trampled upon by man, as in the name of 
liberty and equality during the first French Revolution. 
Those self-styled champions of popular rights, Danton, 
Marat, Robespierre, and their colleagues, so far tran- 
scended the tyranny and cruelty of earlier times, that, 
placed at their side, the most relentless tyrants (except 
those who were idiots or madmen, as some of the Roman 
Emperors seem to have been) might appear in the com- 
parison with clean hands and with honest and generous 
hearts. Thus was France tossed in the whirlpool of 
democratic tyranny, till she deemed herself only too 
happy to escape from her hydra-headed despot to the 
unbounded power and sole mastery of a single absolute 
sovereign. 

It was this same absence of the religious element that 
vitiated the ancient republics, commonly so called, which 
were in fact, and without exception, oppressive oligarchies, 



THE NATURAL RELIGION OF THE STATE. 235 

in which the caste-system was established as rigorously as 
it is now in Hinclostan, with the exception that there was 
no indelible taint of blood to prevent members of a lower 
caste from rising by extraordinary genius or some rare 
conjuncture of favoring circumstances. 

We have thus seen that the diffusive principle and the 
entire system of equal rights and mutual obligations rest 
on the Divine paternity and the immortality of man, which 
appertain most emphatically to the natural religion of the 
state. But these are truths of natural religion which are 
clearly discerned only in the light of revelation, or, rather, 
only in the person of Him who could say, " He that hath 
seen me, hath seen the Father," and in whose resurrec- 
tion the eternal life is made manifest. In the precise 
proportion in which his words are not only repeated in the 
creeds, but incorporated into the life of nations, must 
there be the progressive realization of those truths pro- 
nounced in our Declaration of Independence to be self- 
evident, yet never self-evident except at a high stage of 
Christian culture ; — " that all men are created equal ; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain in- 
alienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights 
governments are established, deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed." 

If Christianity be thus identical with the natural re- 
ligion of the state, and if its advancement must inevitably 
result in the progressive civilization of the race, we have 
an affirmative answer to the question of the permanence 
of modern civilization. Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome 
successively attained a very high degree of civilization 
and refinement, and were subsequently overswept by bar- 
barism, leaving only records and ruins of their former 



236 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

renown ; and the story of their decline was told by a 
crafty old Roman, who, walking in his garden with the 
treason-plotting magistrate of a rival city, struck off with 
his staff the heads of the tallest flowers in a bed of pop- 
pies, — thus hinting that, if a few chief heads of the people 
could be laid low, the state would topple and fall. What 
is miscalled ancient civilization shone only on the tallest 
heads, and in any civil commotion or barbarian inroad 
they fell at once ; and the mass left behind, not having 
partaken in the civilization, could not perpetuate it. 
Modern civilization must escape this fate by its universal 
diffusion, — by its having its shrine in the workshop no less 
*than in the drawing-room, in the hamlet no less than in 
the metropolis. It must have for its defenders, not a cho- 
sen host, fit champions though few, but a national guard, 
a militia in which there are no exempts, in which every 
name is enrolled, and every laborer does battle for his 
soil. Such a civilization can die out only with the race. 
It must live, because Christianity, its mother, will ever 
live. It must grow, because her star will culminate. It 
must become universal ; for the word of the Eternal has 
gone forth that her sceptre shall rule over all. 



LECTURE XII. 

THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. — CONCLUSION. 

In previous Lectures I have attempted to show the 
identity of the doctrines and ethics of Christianity with 
the religion of nature. Christianity has, also, its institu- 
tions, - — positive institutions, as they are sometimes called, 
and so called from the general belief that there is no in- 
trinsic reason for them, that they are wholly of arbitrary 
appointment, and that they might have had a different 
form and yet have equally answered their purpose. There 
is so little of formal institution or ritual belonging ex- 
clusively to Christianity, and what there is, though sacred 
and important, holds so secondary a place, that we might 
admit it to be arbitrary, and yet the admission w^ould 
hardly modify our general view of the religion. But 
its few forms are not rigid and arbitrary. Its ceremonial 
hardly merits the name, so simple is it, so flexible, and 
so capable of variation in its details ; while it is so sig- 
nificant, and so natural in its significance, that it easily 
ranges itself with doctrine and duty under the religion of 
nature, — and the more so, as it does not even draw its 
meaning from the historical facts of the Gospel, but rather 
from the fundamental and eternal laws which the Gospel 
reveals. Baptism, the initiatory rite, avails itself of the 
universally accepted symbol of purity ; and even had it 
not been appointed by the authority of Christ, it might 
easily have come into use for the infant, whose native 



238 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

purity it typifies, while it prefigures the cleanness of heart 
and life which is our first hope and prayer for him in a 
world of temptation, and equally for the penitent, whose 
washing from sin is the one patent fact of his present 
state, and whose continued purity is at once his own fer- 
vent desire and the foremost wish of all who seek his true 
good. And were we left, without the request of Him 
whose redemption sacrifice this day 1 commemorates, to 
choose a rite which should express at once our thankful- 
ness for the Divine benignity and our fellowship with our 
brethren still on the earth, with those who have passed on 
before us, and with the Lord of the living and the dead 
in whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is made 
one, what could we elect so natural, so appropriate, so 
fraught with associations at once of gratitude and com- 
munion, as the likeness of the social meal, crowned with 
the bounties of Providence, and in all times and lands 
refined and spiritualized by domestic love, friendly con- 
verse, and hospitable kindness ? It was in the very 
simplicity of nature that He whose loving regards on the 
eve of his crucifixion passed down the vista of ages and 
comprehended unborn generations, sought for his com- 
memorative rite no elaborate ceremony, but took bread 
and wine, the staff and the refreshment of daily life, and 
converted them into symbols of the deathless union of 
his spiritual family, — typifying still further the common 
duties, unostentatious sacrifices, daily wayside charities, 
which are the perpetual token, seal, and pledge of the 
communion of his disciples with one another and with 
their Lord and Master. 

As regards the organization of the Church, it would ill 
become me to enter here on disputed ground ; yet I 

1 This Lecture was delivered on the evening of Good Friday. 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 239 

would beg leave to express my entire accordance with 
Archbishop Whately in the belief that no unvarying type 
of church-organization is expressly enjoined in the New 
Testament, or virtually prescribed by Christ or his Apos- 
tles, and that the absence of such a type shows it to have 
been the design of the Founder of our religion that each 
portion of the Church should adopt such interior arrange- 
ments as may best suit its needs, insure its stability, pro- 
mote its edification, and extend its usefulness. 

Omitting, for lack of time, the further treatment of the 
specifically Christian ritual, I pass to the consideration of 
the Sabbath, — an institution older than Christianity, yet 
so emphatically sanctioned by Jesus Christ, and so gener- 
ally observed in his Church, as to be closely identified 
with his religion. The position which the Sabbath holds 
in the Decalogue claims our special attention. Of the 
ten commandments said to have been given on Mount 
Sinai, nine are confessedly not Hebrew, nor temporary, 
nor ritual, but of essential duty and universal obligation ; 
presenting, in fine, an epitome of practical religion and 
ethics, from which you can take nothing without leaving 
a lacuna to be deprecated, to which you can add nothing 
that would not hold a secondary place as compared with 
either of the nine. With these, fourth in the series, pre- 
ceded by the law which interdicts blasphemy, the most 
audacious of sins against the Majesty of heaven, and fol- 
lowed by the law which enjoins filial piety, the first and 
most sacred in the catalogue of relative duties and the 
fountain-head of all social virtues, stands the precept, 
" Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." If this be 
a mere provision of the Jewish ritual, why is it here, and 
not rather in Leviticus, along with the feast-days? Its 



240 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

place seems to indicate that it was regarded, at least by 
the author of the Pentateuch, as, like the rest, a law of 
natural right, intrinsic fitness, and universal obligation. 
Our Saviour and his Apostles evidently take this ground. 
They never represent the Hebrew ritual as binding on 
any but the posterity of Jacob, or as permanently binding 
on them ; but they repeatedly cite the Decalogue as of 
universal and perpetual obligation, and Jesus quotes it in 
answer to the question, " What shall I do that I may 
inherit eternal life " ? He also says, without limitation or 
qualification, " The Sabbath was made for man," — not 
for the Hebrews, but for all men ; and in claiming as ap- 
propriate for its observance works of love and charity, he 
implies that there are other works, in themselves innocent 
and right, from which it is a duty to abstain on the Sab- 
bath. Yet more, he cites God's beneficent activity during 
the age-long Sabbath of creation, whose seconds are centu- 
ries, as the precedent for his own beneficent activity on 
the weekly Sabbath, — " My Father worketh hitherto," 
that is, during the Sabbath that has supervened upon the 
successive epochs of creative energy, " and I work," that 
is, I in like manner do his work on the Sabbath that suc- 
ceeds every six days of secular toil. 

I cannot but regard the law of the Sabbath as a law of 
natural religion, revealed because it is natural, written on 
the tablet* of stone because it had been first written on 
human, animal, and inanimate nature. It is as old as the 
creation, and the author of the Pentateuch did not ante- 
date it when he made it coeval with the birth of man. 
We find repeated traces of it in Genesis, — in the division 
of time into weeks, and in the sacredness" attached to the 
number seven in the lives of the ancient patriarchs. 
When mention is first made of the Sabbath in the history 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 241 

of the Israelites, prior to the giving of the law from 
Mount Sinai, it is named, not as a new institution, with' 
the detailed exposition of reasons and motives which in 
the sacred books always accompanies important enact- 
ments made for the first time, but in precisely the way 
in which we should expect to read the re-enactment of an 
observance old, traditional, well knoAvn, yet partially dis- 
used during the season of Egyptian bondage ; — " To- 
morrow is the 1 [a] rest of the 1 [a] holy Sabbath unto 
the Lord. Bake that which ye will bake, and seethe that 
which ye will seethe ; and that which remaineth over, lay 
up for you to be kept until the morning." The septenary 
division of time from the earliest ages was uniformly ob- 
served all over the Eastern world. We find vestiges of 
it among the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, and Arabs, 
nations severed from the common ancestral tree long 
before the birth of the Hebrew commonwealth. The 
Greeks evidently brought with them from the East the 
septenary institutions, associations, and habits common to 
the Oriental nations ; for both Hesiod and Homer speak 
of "the seventh, the sacred day." 

The primeval origin of the Sabbath becomes the more 
probable when we consider that the week is not an astro- 
nomical division, but that it is precisely adapted to confuse 
and derange the month, — the most obvious astronomical 
period longer than the day. The epochs of the new and 
the full moon were prominently marked by all ancient na- 
tions. The average length of the month is twenty-nine 
and a half days, so that each successive festival of the new 
or the full moon must have recurred later in the w r eek 

1 The article [the] is wanting in the Hebrew. Its presence would strengthen 
our argument; yet it is so often omitted by the Hebrew writers in positions in 
which modern usage would require the definite article, that no adverse infer- 
ence can be founded on its absence. 

11 * 



242 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

than the preceding, — a fact which shows that the week is 
more likely to have been a primeval institution, than to 
have resulted from an awkward attempt to divide the 
month by a divisor which leaves with regard to the month 
an annoying and embarrassing remainder. 

The law of the Sabbath is a law of the human body. 
Man's physical strength will not bear a perpetual strain. 
It has always been found necessary to give periods of re- 
laxation to the toil-driven. Where the weekly Sabbath 
has not been so appropriated, its place has been supplied, 
though imperfectly, by festivals, public games, saturnalia, 
when the axe, the hammer, and the distaff have been laid 
aside, and the slave has been as free as his master. Re- 
garding man simply as a mechanical agent, and consid- 
ering the question how in a series of years he may be 
enabled to accomplish the most labor, ample experience 
has shown that six working-days in the week are worth 
more than seven. Where there are no regular intervals 
of repose, the laborer is soon broken down, and becomes 
a spiritless slave, incapable of half the effort and endur- 
ance which sit lightly on him who has one day of rest in 
seven. The farmer in hay-time and harvest-time, the 
merchant in a busy season, the hard-working mechanic, 
feels on Saturday night that he has used all his strength 
and energy, and can toil no longer. Did he rise the next 
morning to pursue his task, it would be with a heavy 
heart and a listless hand. But the day of rest passes 
over him, and he is renovated, and goes back to his labor 
with fresh vigor and an elastic spirit. The command- 
ment, " Remember the Sabbath day," is written on every 
muscle and sinew in man's frame, arid he who remembers 
not the Sabbath for its benign uses must remember it in 
lassitude and unprofitableness. 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 243 

Moreover, experience has shown, not only that the 
weekly day of rest is needed, but that it suffices for indus- 
trial purposes. The maximum of health, strength, and 
working capacity is attained in those nations and commu- 
nities where the weekly Sabbath is best observed, and the 
residue of the time devoted to the pursuits of active life, 
and from this maximum there is a falling off, equally, on 
the one hand, in communities and kinds of labor on which 
" Sunday shines no Sabbath day," and, on the other, in 
those countries in which numerous holy days have been 
converted into holidays, — a system which uniformly en- 
genders idleness and unthrift. 

The law of the Sabbath is written also on the consti- 
tution of the beasts that aid man in his labor; and the 
extension of its immunities to cattle in the Decalogue, in 
an age when neither humanity nor far-sighted selfishness 
could have had much place in their treatment, is one of 
the many internal evidences that this sublime st compend 
of practical ethics emanated from the careful Providence 
of Him who despises nothing that he has made. Before 
stage-coaches on our long routes of travel became his- 
torical, there was, in the economy of brute life, a contrast, 
the statistics of which, if not substantiated by the records 
of many years, would be almost incredible, between the 
lines on which coaches ran but six days in the week, and 
those on which the weekly Sabbath was not recognized. 
Chateaubriand says, that during the reign of atheism in 
France, when the National Assembly substituted for the 
week and the Sabbath the decimal division of time, with a 
holiday every tenth day, the peasantry in the rural dis- 
tricts found that their cattle would not forsake the law of 
God for the ordinance of man. The strength and ani- 
mal spirits of the beasts declined under the new regime. 



244 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

" Our cattle," said the rustics, " know the Sabbath, and 
will have it " ; x and the one day's rest in seven was re- 
sumed in many quarters on economical grounds, before 
the nation shook off the nightmare of infidelity. 

The law of the Sabbath is written even on inanimate 
nature. The artificial aids and multipliers of human in- 
dustry, the fixtures of steam and water-power, locomotive 
engines, the strongest and best-adjusted machinery, need 
periodical rest and refitting, no less than the limbs and 
sinews of the operative ; and though we cannot assign to 
the repairing of water-courses and the cleansing of boilers 
an important office among the means of religious edifica- 
tion in a manufacturing city or village, yet the notorious 
fact that Sunday is thus employed, often from midnight to 
midnight, shows that cupidity driven to desperation can 
never obliterate the Sabbath. 

In a former Lecture I illustrated the tendency that 
there is in the civilized world to over-production, leading 
to a glut in the markets, and necessitating the occasional 
suspension of many departments of industry, with loss of 
income to the capitalists and of subsistence to the laborers. 
It is obvious that six days' work in each community will 
more than suffice for the needs of the seven days ; and 
the effect of the weekly Sabbath, supposing that seven 
days' labor would really produce more than six, (which I 
more than doubt,) is therefore not to deprive the commu- 
nity of the needful fruits of labor, but to check the inju- 
rious excess of production. 

I have thus far spoken only of the physical necessity 
for the Sabbath. It is, if possible, even more absolutely 
essential to the human intellect. When the mind pursues 

1 " Nos boeufs connaissent le dimanche, et ne veulent pas travailler ce 
jour-la." — Genie du Christianisme, Partie 4 ie me, Livre l er » Chap. IV. 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 245 

the same track from day to day without repose, either the 
mind itself loses its elasticity and its full working power, 
thus winning for itself unsought and unwelcome relief, or 
else the overtasking of the brain induces bodily disease 
and infirmity. But, with the weekly rest, or the change 
of occupation which is the most desirable mode of rest to 
the vigorous intellect, the most arduous pursuits of learn- 
ing, science, or professional duty may be sustained through 
a long life with unflagging and unwearied energy. Should 
any one doubt the necessity of which I speak, I could 
only ask him to assume for a while the else easy and 
happy charge of the clerical profession, in which one is 
tempted, nay, often compelled, to devote all his days to 
the same class of duties, — the noblest, the most delight- 
ful, the most engrossing that can be devolved on man, — 
and then see how surely his mental vigor and animal 
spirits will droop after a few months of continuous toil, so 
that he must either replace his lost Sabbaths by a pro- 
longed season of recreation, or bear the penalty in chronic 
illness and disablement. I doubt whether any clergyman 
can be found so hardy as not to have ascertained that the 
law of the Sabbath is a natural, constitutional law, and in 
that respect, if in no other, as old as the creation. The 
testimony of the greatest minds of modern times in this 
behalf is clear, fall, and strong. I might easily fill my 
Lecture with citations from men whose names alone are 
solid arguments. But, not to multiply witnesses on a 
point so obvious and self-evident, I will barely quote a 
testimony uttered in my own hearing. The venerable 
Nathan Dane, to whom the country is indebted for the 
Ordinance of 1787 for the Government of the North- 
west Territory, was deemed the most erudite lawyer of 
his time. He lived to the age of eighty-three, and for 



246 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

many years, and till within a few weeks of his death, he 
spent fourteen hours a day in his library. He seemed 
incapable of light labor or of literary recreation, and 
eighty-four hours of every week were given to the driest 
details of law, political science, and recondite history. 
Not long before his death, he told me that he attributed 
his prolonged and undiminished capacity of study to his 
having for a full half-century devoted the Sabbath to an 
entirely different class of studies from those which occu- 
pied him during the week, — not to easy religious reading 
(for he lacked the ability of even such relaxation), but to 
the Hebrew Scriptures in the original, to ecclesiastical 
history, and to the profounder themes of inquiry connected 
with the Christian revelation. " From Sundays thus 
spent," said he, " I have always returned on Monday 
morning to my week's work, refreshed and strengthened." 
The Sabbath is also of incalculable worth as a civilizing 
agent. How little opportunity would there be for reflec- 
tion, for the growth of meditative wisdom, for plans that 
look beyond the passing moment, in a community, where 
from the beginning to the end of the year there was an 
unbroken round of grovelling toil ! It is this periodical 
change in the routine of life, this diversion of the thoughts 
into purer channels, that gives freshness and vigor to the 
general mind, imparts the impulse to improvement, and 
creates the leisure and cherishes the reflective habits which 
alone can make the experience of the past availing. It is 
the Sabbath that calls men's thoughts off from the work- 
ing-day world to the region of the intellect and the imagi- 
nation, to unearthly questionings and musings, to philos- 
ophy and poetry. Hence alone the popular taste and 
demand for literature. Hence the existence of an intel- 
lectual department of society, — of classes of men whose 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 247 

business it is to instruct, edify, and enrich the public mind. 
Were there no Sabbath, there would still be a literature ; 
for the few master-spirits of the race would shine out with 
a radiance which siurounding darkness would be unable 
equally to comprehend and to quench. But these greater 
lights would beam as solitary stars. There could not be 
the galaxy of pure taste, refined sentiment, and elevated 
thought, in which Christendom now rejoices. The litera- 
ture that sprang into being would be the property of the 
few r , not of the many. The great mass of the people 
would never find leisure to grow conversant with it, 
except as it might assume the lyric form, and ally itself to 
music. 

The distinction here suggested may be clearly traced 
between Hebrew and classic literature and civilization. 
The Old Testament constituted in the strictest sense a 
national literature, and all sorts and conditions of people 
were familiar with it. Hebrew civilization, too, though 
its culminating point was far below that of the Periclean 
or the Augustan age, yet penetrated the whole commu- 
nity, permeated every vein and artery of the body politic. 
The civilization of Greece and Rome, on the other hand, 
as I showed you in my last Lecture, was confined chiefly 
to the circles of rank and wealth, leaving the great body 
of the people unbenefited. In producing this contrast, 
the student of history must, I think, ascribe more influ- 
ence than to all other causes combined to the fact that in 
Judaea the whole population had one day in seven seques- 
tered from the dusty arena for calmer thoughts and more 
elevating duties, while upon Athens and Rome there rose 
no stated day of rest and devotion. 

The Sabbath vindicates for itself still farther a place 
in the religion of nature, on the ground of its domestic 



248 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

influences. The rust of the world would corrode the 
chain of home sympathy and love, were it not burnished 
in these frequent intervals of holy rest. Think of the 
lives which the great majority of men — the rich often 
more than the poor — lead during the six working-days, 
— so engrossed by labor or harassed by business as 
hardly to snatch a hasty meal with their families, fre- 
quently not even that, forth before the day has fairly 
opened, returning perhaps not till a late evening hour, 
rarely getting sight of the younger members of the house- 
hold, and meeting the elder only at hurried moments or 
in extreme weariness. Were this the routine of the 
whole year's life, how could the members of a family be- 
come acquainted with one another's minds and charac- 
ters? The same persons might for half a century call 
the same house their home, yet there would be no com- 
munion of soul with soul, no growth of common tastes 
and sentiments. The father would be the mere steward 
of his family, and the dwellers beneath his roof would be 
little more to him than pleasant fellow-lodgers at an inn. 
But the Sabbath has attached to home an interest and a 
worth which can be derived from no other source, has 
cherished and refined those invaluable departments of art 
and taste which have the comfort and adornment of home- 
life for their object, and stands second to none of the 
agencies by which are shed upon us the holy and benig- 
nant influences of Him in whom all the families of the 
earth are blessed. 

The Sabbath is equally essential to man's political well- 
being, and especially to the permanence of free institu- 
tions. It is the day of equal rights. It levels all facti- 
tious distinctions. It owns no differences of wealth, or 
caste, or race, or color ; but proffers its benediction to all 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 249 

alike. It recognizes man as he is in the counsels and 
providence of Him who is no respecter of persons. It at 
once humbles pride, and relieves depression. It promotes 
a healthful sympathy and a mutual interest among all 
classes of society. It commends the poor to the charity 
of the more prosperous, and numberless are the sources 
of succor for the burdened and the indigent which flow 
from the Sabbath assembly. There no privileged order 
steps before the rest, — no lordly pontiff distances and 
repels the humble worshipper ; but as high and low, rich 
and poor, are brought into a community of relation with 
their Creator and Preserver, and through him with one 
another, they cease to be infatuated on the one hand, and 
disheartened on the other, by the various lots which 
Providence has assigned to them. Thus the spirit of 
exclusive aristocracy is repressed, while the tendency to 
agrarianism and communism is equally checked. The 
haughty separatist and the factious leveller are both 
rebuked, and the foundations of republicanism are laid 
in that essential equality before God which needs no 
outward addition to make itself perfect. 

It is a striking confirmation of these views, that the 
friends of tyranny and of anarchy have manifested equal 
fear of the Sabbath, and in numerous instances have 
sought to undermine its obligation and to violate its sanc- 
tity, as a step of prime importance toward the subversion 
of freedom or of law. Thus, when the British crown was 
most active in its encroachments on the liberties of the 
people, the Sabbath was a chief point of attack, and edicts 
were issued from the court, and published from the des- 
ecrated pulpits of an Erastian and sycophantic church, 
instituting for the day of worship noisy, riotous, and 
brutalizing sports. We have seen that the same hostility 
11* 



250 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

to the Sabbatli was manifested by the destructives of the 
French Revolution. In our own land and day, the radicals, 
levellers, and no-government men who from time to time 
have lifted their voices against law, wholesome subordina- 
tion, and salutary restraint, have uniformly cast the first 
stone at the Sabbath, its institutions and their guardians. 

The Sabbath proffers peculiar claims to be regarded in 
its political uses, in connection with the eager enterprise 
of a young and growing people. Our nation is, no doubt, 
characterized beyond all others by earnestness and haste 
in the pursuit of wealth and preferment. And if, in the 
midst of this breathless competition, everything sacred is 
not trampled under foot ; if the character of our mer- 
chants is marked, with rare exceptions, by sterling in- 
tegrity ; if there be a surviving seed of true patriots, — 
all this is owing, not to Christianity, (for where would 
its counsels find entrance among the closely crowded 
cares and conflicts of daily life ?) but to the Sabbath, 
which has called the merchant and the statesman to their 
homes and to their own hearts, has checked their ardor of 
pursuit, let in the solemn light of eternity on transient 
gain and honor, uttered words of duty and accountable- 
ness, and held up the infallible mirror of Divine revela- 
tion to the conscience and the life. 

Then, again, in our frequently recurring seasons of 
fierce political excitement, who can say to what a height 
the embittered passions of partisans might mount, and in 
what desolating floods of uproar and violence they might 
discharge themselves, were it not for these merciful 
breathing-spells, when He who once held the pulse-beat 
of the Galilean sea calms the billows of human strife, and 
calls the stormy wrath of man to praise Him ? On the 
six days men remember their grounds of animosity and 






THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 251 

conflict ; on the seventh, those who have garrisoned oppo- 
site camps through the week meet face to face, kneel side 
by side, and thoughts of toleration and kindness break in 
upon their opinionativeness and mutual repugnancy. The 
voice comes to them, and forces itself upon their hearts, 
" All ye are brethren, — why fall ye out by the way? 
Why wrong ye one another? " And though the morrow 
renew the strife, they return to it with slackened interest, 
and with the hope, awakened by the period of hallowed 
calm, for the speedy close of the controversy, and the 
quiet reunion of the distracted body politic. 

The Sabbath is the law of man's religious nature, being 
absolutely essential to the social expression, the diffusion, 
and the transmission of the religious sentiment. Public 
worship grows naturally and spontaneously from the great 
foundation-truths of a common paternity and a common 
destiny. These, once admitted and felt, imply and crave 
religious communion. But public worship and enlarged 
communion demand a Sabbath. The assembly cannot be 
convened unless the time be appointed and known before- 
hand, nor frequently gathered unless at stated intervals. 
For so solemn an act as Divine worship, it seems fitting 
that the same day be observed throughout a whole com- 
munity, in order that business and amusement may not 
interfere with devotion, and that the worshippers may 
find nothing going on around them which shall call off 
their attention from their religious duties, or disturb and 
wound their sensibilities in performing them. Hence 
natural piety would prescribe for the stated days of wor- 
ship such a degree of rest and such an air of solemnity in 
the community as may comport with the dignity of the 
service in which its devout members are engaged. 

Yet again, were there no Sabbath, it is to be feared 



252 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

that for the great mass of every community, nay, for many 
who through the form of worship have been suffused by 
its spirit and energized by its power, there would be no 
holy time. The Sabbath, by suspending worldly engage- 
ments, creates a void which there is always hope that 
devotion may come in and fill. How else could we get 
the ear of the indifferent for religious truth and duty ? 
How could we induce them to pause long enough in the 
chase of present pleasure or gain, to think of the en- 
during wealth and honor of the Christian calling ? You 
go to a man in the rush of business or the spring-tide of 
gayety, and he puts you off till " a more convenient 
season." On the Sabbath the convenient season has 
come. The world is still; the congregation is gath- 
ered, and he joins the multitude that keep holy time. 
He may go to scoff, he may go to criticise, he may go 
merely because others go ; — still he is there, and the 
arrow of conviction may be driven home, and send him 
forth to repent and pray. These blessed days are 

" Wakeners of prayer in man; — his resting-bowers, 

As on he journeys in the narrow way, 
Where, Eden-like, Jehovah's walking-hours 

Are waited for as in the cool of day; — 
Days fixed by God for intercourse with dust, 

To raise our thoughts and purify our powers; — 
Periods appointed to renew our trust; — 

A gleam of glory after six days' showers." 

I have thus, I trust, vindicated the claim of the Sab- 
bath to its place in the religion of nature. Permit me, 
in closing, to commend this primeval institution to your 
sacred reverence and your loyal observance. It has nur- 
tured — and nowhere more than in our own New Eng- 
land — great and holy men, elect spirits in every walk in 



THE SABBATH A LAW OF NATURAL RELIGION. 253 

life, — those who have become chief by being servants of 
all, those who have irradiated the lowest stations by vir- 
tues that would have adorned the highest. The vast 
themes of religious contemplation to which the Sabbath 
invites us enlarge the matrices of thought, expand the 
framework of the soul, stretch the extensor muscles of 
the intellect, nerve and sharpen the apprehensive powers, 
feed and exalt the imagination, and re-create the soul in 
an ever-closer likeness to the all-creative Spirit. He who, 
like Jacob with the angel, wrestles in these hallowed 
hours with truths vast as the universe and boundless as 
eternity, gets the reward of the athlete in comprehensive 
grasp and cogent force of intellect, and can thus become 
adequate in every field to cope with the noblest minds, to 
wrest her secrets from Nature, its hoarded wealth of 
beauty from poetry, its power to enlighten, guide, and 
gladden from every form of literature and art. 

Above all, let the Sabbath be prized and honored for 
the sake of the spiritual nature. The religious life may, 
indeed, derive light and warmth from the few moments of 
daily devotion, — from holy thoughts that rise in the * 
midst of toil and care. But these need their prolonged 
kindling seasons, and I have yet to learn that daily devo- 
tion or the prayer without ceasing can be well sustained 
without the agency of the consecrated Sabbath. On 
other days there are numerous influences unfavorable to 
the spirit of piety, and the altar-flame must often be like 
a fire built on ice, the fuel brought from afar ; and whence 
but from the Sabbath-pile ? But if the soul gives itself 
up on that one day to religious thoughts, humane sympa- 
thies, peaceful contemplations, spiritual desires and affec- 
tions, it takes with itself a treasury for the draft and waste 
of the working-day world, — bread of heaven that may 



254 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

nourish it for its six days' journey. " Make all days alike," 
is a maxim not unfrequently urged by those who hold the 
Sabbath in low esteem. I would echo it. Make all days 
alike, — the nearer alike the better. But level upward, 
not downward. Keep the delectable mountains, which 
God made when he made the world, which tower above 
the waters of the Deluge, and fill in the intervening 
valleys as high as you can. Let Sabbath thoughts and 
feelings flow down continually into the week-days, and 
leave, their rich deposit there, to render the whole life 
purer, nobler, more faithful, more heavenly. Let the 
valleys rise higher and higher as the weeks roll on, till 
you have made all days alike, the ground all table-land, — 
till the life is a perpetual Sabbath, a prototype of the 
New Jerusalem Sabbath, whose sun goes not down, whose 
worship never dies upon the ear, of which it is written, 
" The glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the 
light thereof." 

I have thus completed my assigned course of Lectures ; 
but I feel that I have barely marked for you here and 
there a station of thought, and made with you fragmen- 
tary surveys which it remains for you to connect and 
extend by your own reflection and research. I com- 
menced by showing you the necessary identity of natural 
and revealed religion, which differ, not in their substance, 
but in their sources. I set forth the insufficiency and 
inadequacy of our own powers for the attainment of 
religious truth. I exhibited revelation, miracles, and 
authoritative scriptures as postulates of natural religion, 
and therefore in themselves antecedently probable. I 
presented the evidence of the Divine paternity in nature 
and in human experience, and considered the more patent 



CONCLUSION. 255 

objections to it derived from suffering, from moral evil, 
and from the condition of the unprivileged portion of our 
race. I illustrated the Divine providence in human art, 
and in the distribution of capacities and endowments 
among men. J demonstrated the Divine holiness from 
the human conscience, and from the inevitable law of 
moral retribution, I exhibited the accordance of the 
official relations of Jesus Christ to mankind with natural 
religion. I adduced the extra-Scriptural arguments for 
the immortality brought to light in the Gospel. I illus- 
trated the accordance of Christian morality with natural, 
universal, and eternal law, and the foundation in nature 
for the fundamental precepts of love to God and to man, 
and of personal and social duty. I considered the polit- 
ico-religious basis of government and social order, fi- 
nally, in the present Lecture, I have shown that Christian 
institutions — the Sabbath especially — are not arbitrary, 
but legitimated on grounds of natural fitness. 

I have endeavored, without transcending the -theme as- 
signed to me, — natural religion, — to present what seems 
to me the most important portion of the evidence for Chris- 
tianity. But because I have laid emphatic stress on its 
coincidence with nature, I would not have you infer that 
I hold the external evidences on which also it relies in 
light esteem. On the other hand, they seem to me 
impregnable, and they have gained new strength with 
the researches of the present age in geography, in archae- 
ology, and especially in the disinterred monuments and 
deciphered records of Egypt and of Nineveh. But a 
first-hand acquaintance with these evidences requires 
time, which indeed cannot be more worthily spent, but 
which all have not at their command, and an extended 
familiarity with books to which few except those who 
devote themselves to theological study have easy access. 



256 CHRISTIANITY THE RELIGION OF NATURE. 

On the other hand, the proof of the Divine origin of 
Christianity derived from its accordance with man's na- 
ture and needs, and with the essential laws of the outward 
and the spiritual universe, can be appreciated by every 
serious mind, and to me it seems complete, demonstrative, 
unanswerable. In these two classes of evidences, God 
has given us in behalf of his revelation, as it were, two 
independent and amply competent witnesses, either worthy 
of entire credence, and both together creating an assur- 
ance beyond the reach of cavil or the shadow of doubt. 
But the argument from nature has one prerogative. Ex- 
ternal evidence and testimony prove that Christianity is a 
Divine revelation, but not that it is final and sufficient for 
all time. Its coincidence with nature demonstrates its 
eternity and its universal adaptation, and proves Christ 
not only the accredited Author, but equally the Finisher 
of the faith which alone can renovate, sanctify, and save 
our race. 

If Christianity has its foundation in man's nature and 
needs, it can never be outgrown, nor can its records 
become obsolete. It is the sole Sun of righteousness, and 
must forever be the central orb of the spiritual universe. 
But it may or may not be our luminary and guide. As 
the earth in its annual circuit throws our northern zone 
where only the oblique rays of the winter solstice reach 
it, and vital warmth almost deserts it, so may we make 
for our souls a winter solstice by our worldliness, our con- 
tented sensualism, our voluntary guilt. And we may, 
too, create for ourselves a perpetual summer solstice by 
our earnest aspirations, by our docility of spirit, by hearts 
ever open to the influence of the Divine truth and love. 

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